| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: alone with a few Hottentot servants, or any other companions she could
find.
This letter I took to Retief, and read it to him. At my request, also,
he scrawled at the foot of it:
"I have seen the above and approve it, knowing all the story, which may
be true or false. Do as your husband bids you, but do not talk of it in
the camp except to those whom he mentions.--PIETER RETIEF."
So the messenger departed at dawn, and in due course delivered my letter
to Marie.
The next day was Sunday. In the morning I went to call upon the
Reverend Mr. Owen, the missionary, who was very glad to see me. He
Marie |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: "How bully that cart would look on our barricade!"
The Auvergnat was snoring.
Gavroche gently tugged at the cart from behind, and at the Auvergnat
from the front, that is to say, by the feet, and at the expiration
of another minute the imperturbable Auvergnat was reposing flat
on the pavement.
The cart was free.
Gavroche, habituated to facing the unexpected in all quarters,
had everything about him. He fumbled in one of his pockets,
and pulled from it a scrap of paper and a bit of red pencil filched
from some carpenter.
Les Miserables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: relation to the present and the past, or in relation to the future also?
PROTARCHUS: I should say in relation to all times alike.
SOCRATES: Have not purely mental pleasures and pains been described
already as in some cases anticipations of the bodily ones; from which we
may infer that anticipatory pleasures and pains have to do with the future?
PROTARCHUS: Most true.
SOCRATES: And do all those writings and paintings which, as we were saying
a little while ago, are produced in us, relate to the past and present
only, and not to the future?
PROTARCHUS: To the future, very much.
SOCRATES: When you say, 'Very much,' you mean to imply that all these
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