| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: the captured property, they were met by Herippidas with his brigadiers
and captains, who stopped them and[7] relieved them of all they had;
the object being to have as large a list as possible of captures to
deliver over to the officers who superintended the sale of booty.[8]
This treatment the Asiatics found intolerable. They deemed themselves
at once injured and insulted, got their kit together in the night, and
made off in the direction of Sardis to join Ariaeus without mistrust,
seeing that he too had revolted and gone to war with the king. On
Agesilaus himself no heavier blow fell during the whole campaign than
the desertion of Spithridates and Megabates and the Paphlagonians.
[6] Lit. "one hundred and sixty stades."
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: HOW THE SENESCHAL STRUGGLED WITH HIS WIFE'S MODESTY.
During the first days of his marriage the seneschal imprinted many
fibs to tell his wife, whose so estimable innocence he abused.
Firstly, he found in his judicial functions good excuses for leaving
her at times alone; then he occupied himself with the peasants of the
neighbourhood, and took them to dress the vines on his lands at
Vouvray, and at length pampered her up with a thousand absurd tales.
At one time he would say that lords did not behave like common people,
that the children were only planted at certain celestial conjunctions
ascertained by learned astrologers; at another that one should abstain
from begetting children on feast days, because it was a great
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: sell, on their own account, and they calculated to get sixteen or
eighteen hundred dollars for her; and the child, they said, was
going to a trader, who had bought him; and then there was the boy,
Jim, and his mother, they were to go back to their masters in
Kentucky. They said that there were two constables, in a town a
little piece ahead, who would go in with 'em to get 'em taken up,
and the young woman was to be taken before a judge; and one of the
fellows, who is small and smooth-spoken, was to swear to her for
his property, and get her delivered over to him to take south.
They've got a right notion of the track we are going tonight; and
they'll be down after us, six or eight strong. So now, what's to
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
