| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: Soc. Yes, for they too are slaves, and harsh enough are their
taskmasters; slaves are they to luxury and lechery, intemperance and
the wine-cup along with many a fond and ruinous ambition. These
passions so cruelly belord it over the poor soul whom they have got
under their thrall, that so long as he is in the heyday of health and
strong to labour, they compel him to fetch and carry and lay at their
feet the fruit of his toils, and to spend it on their own heart's
lusts; but as soon as he is seen to be incapable of further labour
through old age, they leave him to his gray hairs and misery, and turn
to seize on other victims.[21] Ah! Critobulus, against these must we
wage ceaseless war, for very freedom's sake, no less than if they were
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: and burnt what you could not carry, there was one basketful that you knew
nothing of. The women stayed there, for one was eighty, and one near the
time of her giving birth; and they dared not set out to follow the remnant
of their tribe because you were in the plains below. Every day the old
woman doled grain from the basket; and at night they cooked it in their
cave where you could not see their smoke; and every day the old woman gave
the young one two handfuls and kept one for herself, saying, 'Because of
the child within you.' And when the child was born and the young woman
strong, the old woman took a cloth and filled it with all the grain that
was in the basket; and she put the grain on the young woman's head and tied
the child on her back, and said, 'Go, keeping always along the bank of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: many of our men-of-war of the smaller kind were cruising off the
north coast of Spain - as risky and disagreeable a station as can
be well imagined.
It looks as though that ship of his had had some special service to
perform. A careful explanation of all the circumstances was to be
expected from our man, only, as I've said, some of his pages (good
tough paper too) were missing: gone in covers for jampots or in
wadding for the fowling-pieces of his irreverent posterity. But it
is to be seen clearly that communication with the shore and even
the sending of messengers inland was part of her service, either to
obtain intelligence from or to transmit orders or advice to
Within the Tides |
