| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: enemy to advance from some such point to attack the mines, he cannot
avoid passing Athens; and presuming his force to be small, we may
expect him to be annihilated by our cavalry and frontier police.[61] I
say, presuming his force to be small, since to march with anything
like a large force, and thereby leave his own territory denuded of
troops, would be a startling achievement. Why, the fortified city of
Athens will be much closer the states of the attacking parties than
they themselves will be by the time they have got to the mines. But,
for the sake of argument, let us suppose an enemy to have arrived in
the neighbourhood of Laurium; how is he going to stop there without
provisions? To go out in search of supplies with a detachment of his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs; and stories
His victories, his triumphs, and his glories.
'O Jove!' quoth she, 'how much a fool was I,
To be of such a weak and silly mind 1016
To wail his death who lives and must not die
Till mutual overthrow of mortal kind;
For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,
And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again. 1020
'Fie, fie, fond love! thou art so full of fear
As one with treasure laden, hemm'd with thieves
Trifles, unwitnessed with eye or ear,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: the inauguration of the new galleries at the Metropolitan
Museum, and the spectacle of those great spaces
crowded with the spoils of the ages, where the throng
of fashion circulated through a series of scientifically
catalogued treasures, had suddenly pressed on a rusted
spring of memory.
"Why, this used to be one of the old Cesnola rooms,"
he heard some one say; and instantly everything about
him vanished, and he was sitting alone on a hard
leather divan against a radiator, while a slight figure in
a long sealskin cloak moved away down the meagrely-
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