| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Contrast by Royall Tyler: a soldier fellow, who talked about his row de dow,
dow, and courted a young woman; but, of all the cute
folk I saw, I liked one little fellow--
JENNY
Aye! who was he?
JONATHAN
Why, he had red hair, and a little round plump face
like mine, only not altogether so handsome. His
name was--Darby;--that was his baptizing name;
his other name I forgot. Oh! it was Wig--Wag--
Wag-all, Darby Wag-all,--pray, do you know him?--
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: In some respects the dialogue differs from any other Platonic composition.
The aim is more directly ethical and hortatory; the process by which the
antagonist is undermined is simpler than in other Platonic writings, and
the conclusion more decided. There is a good deal of humour in the manner
in which the pride of Alcibiades, and of the Greeks generally, is supposed
to be taken down by the Spartan and Persian queens; and the dialogue has
considerable dialectical merit. But we have a difficulty in supposing that
the same writer, who has given so profound and complex a notion of the
characters both of Alcibiades and Socrates in the Symposium, should have
treated them in so thin and superficial a manner in the Alcibiades, or that
he would have ascribed to the ironical Socrates the rather unmeaning boast
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Contrast by Royall Tyler: JESSAMY
"There was a certain man, who had a sad scolding
wife,"--now you must laugh.
JONATHAN
Tarnation! That's no laughing matter though.
JESSAMY
"And she lay sick a-dying";--now you must titter.
JONATHAN
What, snigger when the good woman's a-dying!
Gor, I--
JESSAMY
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