| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: True.
And now let us see how our city will be able to supply this great demand:
We may suppose that one man is a husbandman, another a builder, some one
else a weaver--shall we add to them a shoemaker, or perhaps some other
purveyor to our bodily wants?
Quite right.
The barest notion of a State must include four or five men.
Clearly.
And how will they proceed? Will each bring the result of his labours into
a common stock?--the individual husbandman, for example, producing for
four, and labouring four times as long and as much as he need in the
The Republic |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: But these were the foes of his clan,
And he trod upon pity, and came, and civilly greeted the king,
And gravely entreated Rahero; and for all that could fight or sing,
And claimed a name in the land, had fitting phrases of praise;
But with all who were well-descended he spoke of the ancient days.
And "'Tis true," said he, "that in Paea the victual rots on the ground;
But, friends, your number is many; and pigs must be hunted and found,
And the lads troop to the mountains to bring the feis down,
And around the bowls of the kava cluster the maids of the town.
So, for to-night, sleep here; but king, common, and priest
To-morrow, in order due, shall sit with me in the feast."
Ballads |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and there the
tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land. In
the dead hush of midnight, he could even hear the barking of the
watchdog from the opposite shore of the Hudson; but it was so
vague and faint as only to give an idea of his distance from this
faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn
crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far
off, from some farmhouse away among the hills--but it was like a
dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him,
but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps
the guttural twang of a bull-frog from a neighboring marsh, as if
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
