| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: a single shoulder of a hill, as names are squandered (it would seem
to the in-expert, in superfluity) upon these upland sheepwalks; a
bucket would receive the whole discharge of the toy river; it would
take it an appreciable time to fill your morning bath; for the most
part, besides, it soaks unseen through the moss; and yet for the
sake of auld lang syne, and the figure of a certain GENIUS LOCI, I
am condemned to linger awhile in fancy by its shores; and if the
nymph (who cannot be above a span in stature) will but inspire my
pen, I would gladly carry the reader along with me.
John Todd, when I knew him, was already "the oldest herd on the
Pentlands," and had been all his days faithful to that curlew-
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
PREPARER'S NOTE
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a
four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though
 Anabasis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: wondering, came to the place where this "made" ground was in process
of making. Here was a great hole, perhaps two city blocks square,
and with long files of garbage wagons creeping into it. The place had
an odor for which there are no polite words; and it was sprinkled over
with children, who raked in it from dawn till dark. Sometimes visitors
from the packing houses would wander out to see this "dump," and they
would stand by and debate as to whether the children were eating the food
they got, or merely collecting it for the chickens at home. Apparently
none of them ever went down to find out.
Beyond this dump there stood a great brickyard, with smoking chimneys.
First they took out the soil to make bricks, and then they filled it
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