| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: His oriental gifts on everyone
And most on Edith: like a storm he came,
And shook the house, and like a storm he went.
Among the gifts he left her (possibly
He flow'd and ebb'd uncertain, to return
When others had been tested) there was one,
A dagger, in rich sheath with jewels on it
Sprinkled about in gold that branch'd itself
Fine as ice-ferns on January panes
Made by a breath. I know not whence at first,
Nor of what race, the work; but as he told
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: events to which they refer. No extant writer mentions them older than
Cicero and Cornelius Nepos. It does not seem impossible that so attractive
a theme as the meeting of a philosopher and a tyrant, once imagined by the
genius of a Sophist, may have passed into a romance which became famous in
Hellas and the world. It may have created one of the mists of history,
like the Trojan war or the legend of Arthur, which we are unable to
penetrate. In the age of Cicero, and still more in that of Diogenes
Laertius and Appuleius, many other legends had gathered around the
personality of Plato,--more voyages, more journeys to visit tyrants and
Pythagorean philosophers. But if, as we agree with Karsten in supposing,
they are the forgery of some rhetorician or sophist, we cannot agree with
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: SIR OLIVER. Well then Mr. Trip--I presume your master is seldom
without company----
TRIP. Very seldom Sir--the world says ill-natured things of him
but 'tis all malice--no man was ever better beloved--Sir he seldom
sits down to dinner without a dozen particular Friends----
SIR OLIVER. He's very happy indeed--you have a pleasant sort
of Place here I guess?
TRIP. Why yes--here are three or four of us pass our time agreeably
enough--but then our wages are sometimes a little in arrear--and not
very great either--but fifty Pounds a year and find our own Bags and
Bouquets----
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