| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: 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
Cleitophon and his attachment to Thrasymachus in the Republic; and the
Theages by the mention of Theages in the Apology and Republic; or as the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: They sat smoking in silence. In the dining-room Annie was laying
the table for dinner, and a most untragic odor of new garden peas
began to steal along the hall. Dick suddenly stirred and threw away
his cigarette.
"I was going to talk to you about something else," he said, "but
this is hardly the time. I'll get on home." He rose. "She'll be
all right. Only I'd advise very tactful handling and - the
fullest explanation you can make."
"What is it? I'd be glad to have something to keep my mind
occupied. It's eating itself up just now."
"It's a personal matter."
The Breaking Point |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: coat, with square-cut fronts, square-cut tails, and square-cut collar
clothed his slightly bent figure in greenish cloth, finished with
white metal buttons, tawny from wear. His gray hair was so accurately
combed and flattened over his yellow pate that it made it look like a
furrowed field. His little green eyes, that might have been pierced
with a gimlet, flashed beneath arches faintly tinged with red in the
place of eyebrows. Anxieties had wrinkled his forehead with as many
horizontal lines as there were creases in his coat. This colorless
face expressed patience, commercial shrewdness, and the sort of wily
cupidity which is needful in business. At that time these old families
were less rare than they are now, in which the characteristic habits
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