| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: helpless and pitiable; for they were alone among the wild beasts, and had
to carry on the struggle for existence without arts or knowledge, and had
no food, and did not know how to get any. That was the time when
Prometheus brought them fire, Hephaestus and Athene taught them arts, and
other gods gave them seeds and plants. Out of these human life was framed;
for mankind were left to themselves, and ordered their own ways, living,
like the universe, in one cycle after one manner, and in another cycle
after another manner.
Enough of the myth, which may show us two errors of which we were guilty in
our account of the king. The first and grand error was in choosing for our
king a god, who belongs to the other cycle, instead of a man from our own;
Statesman |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: not bear to stay at Frapesle when I saw the lighted windows of
Clochegourde. I dressed, went softly down, and left the chateau by the
door of a tower at the foot of a winding stairway. The coolness of the
night calmed me. I crossed the Indre by the bridge at the Red Mill,
took the ever-blessed punt, and rowed in front of Clochegourde, where
a brilliant light was streaming from a window looking towards Azay.
Again I plunged into my old meditations; but they were now peaceful,
intermingled with the love-note of the nightingale and the solitary
cry of the sedge-warbler. Ideas glided like fairies through my mind,
lifting the black veil which had hidden till then the glorious future.
Soul and senses were alike charmed. With what passion my thoughts rose
The Lily of the Valley |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: I had paid for mine at the Transfer. This is my contribution to
the economy of future emigrants.
A great personage on an American train is the newsboy. He sells
books (such books!), papers, fruit, lollipops, and cigars; and on
emigrant journeys, soap, towels, tin washing dishes, tin coffee
pitchers, coffee, tea, sugar, and tinned eatables, mostly hash or
beans and bacon. Early next morning the newsboy went around the
cars, and chumming on a more extended principle became the order of
the hour. It requires but a copartnery of two to manage beds; but
washing and eating can be carried on most economically by a
syndicate of three. I myself entered a little after sunrise into
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