The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: service, it was not unnatural that he should return to dreams of
Italy. He and his wife were to go (as he told me) on 'a real
honeymoon tour.' He had not been alone with his wife 'to speak
of,' he added, since the birth of his children. But now he was to
enjoy the society of her to whom he wrote, in these last days, that
she was his 'Heaven on earth.' Now he was to revisit Italy, and
see all the pictures and the buildings and the scenes that he
admired so warmly, and lay aside for a time the irritations of his
strenuous activity. Nor was this all. A trifling operation was to
restore his former lightness of foot; and it was a renovated youth
that was to set forth upon this re‰nacted honeymoon.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon: which you hold it remains stiff, the rest hangs loose); and while
perpetually hunting for the portion which escapes him, he lets the
mouthpiece go from his bars.[6] For this reason the rings are hung in
the middle from the two axles,[7] so that while feeling for them with
his tongue and teeth he may neglect to take the bit up against his
jaws.
[5] Or, "poker," as we might say; lit. "spit."
[6] Schneid. cf. Eur. "Hippol." 1223.
[7] See Morgan, note ad loc. Berenger (i. 261) notes: "We have a small
chain in the upset or hollow part of our bits, called a 'Player,'
with which the horse playing with his tongue, and rolling it
 On Horsemanship |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: him alive; but this Machiavellian piece of foresight was scarcely
necessary. His son, young Felipe Belvidero, grew up as a Spaniard
as religiously conscientious as his father was irreligious, in
virtue, perhaps, of the old rule, "A miser has a spendthrift
son." The Abbot of San-Lucar was chosen by Don Juan to be the
director of the consciences of the Duchess of Belvidero and her
son Felipe. The ecclesiastic was a holy man, well shaped, and
admirably well proportioned. He had fine dark eyes, a head like
that of Tiberius, worn with fasting, bleached by an ascetic life,
and, like all dwellers in the wilderness, was daily tempted. The
noble lord had hopes, it may be, of despatching yet another monk
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