| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: in his words, as well as his manner, for he began with,
"Mr. Crawford is gone: he has just left me. I need not
repeat what has passed. I do not want to add to anything
you may now be feeling, by an account of what he has felt.
Suffice it, that he has behaved in the most gentlemanlike
and generous manner, and has confirmed me in a most
favourable opinion of his understanding, heart, and temper.
Upon my representation of what you were suffering,
he immediately, and with the greatest delicacy,
ceased to urge to see you for the present."
Here Fanny, who had looked up, looked down again. "Of course,"
Mansfield Park |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: There were also pretty little barns, with china fences around them;
and many cows and sheep and horses and pigs and chickens, all made
of china, were standing about in groups.
But the strangest of all were the people who lived in this
queer country. There were milkmaids and shepherdesses, with
brightly colored bodices and golden spots all over their gowns;
and princesses with most gorgeous frocks of silver and gold and
purple; and shepherds dressed in knee breeches with pink and
yellow and blue stripes down them, and golden buckles on their
shoes; and princes with jeweled crowns upon their heads, wearing
ermine robes and satin doublets; and funny clowns in ruffled gowns,
The Wizard of Oz |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: Athenians among the Athenians,' falsifying persons and dates, and casting a
veil over the gloomier events of Athenian history. It exhibits an
acquaintance with the funeral oration of Thucydides, and was, perhaps,
intended to rival that great work. If genuine, the proper place of the
Menexenus would be at the end of the Phaedrus. The satirical opening and
the concluding words bear a great resemblance to the earlier dialogues; the
oration itself is professedly a mimetic work, like the speeches in the
Phaedrus, and cannot therefore be tested by a comparison of the other
writings of Plato. The funeral oration of Pericles is expressly mentioned
in the Phaedrus, and this may have suggested the subject, in the same
manner that the Cleitophon appears to be suggested by the slight mention of
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