| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: Court of Chivalry had been rendered that the King announced the
time and place of battle--the time to be the 3d of September, the
place to be Smithfield--a spot much used for such encounters.
During the three weeks or so that intervened between this
announcement and the time of combat, Myles went nearly every day
to visit the lists in course of erection. Often the Prince went
with him; always two or three of his friends of the Scotland Yard
court accompanied him.
The lists were laid out in the usual form. The true or principal
list in which the combatants were to engage was sixty yards long
and forty yards wide; this rectangular space being surrounded by
Men of Iron |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: jar his spirit like a file on a man's teeth. He sickened at the
thought of his two comrades drinking away their reason upon
stolen wine, quarrelling and hiccupping and waking up, while
the doors of the prison yawned for them in the near future.
'Shall I have sold my honour for nothing?' he thought; and a
heat of rage and resolution glowed in his bosom--rage against
his comrades--resolution to carry through this business if it
might be carried; pluck profit out of shame, since the shame at
least was now inevitable; and come home, home from South
America--how did the song go?--'with his pockets full of
money':
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: and it makes an enormous difference whether we are to regard it as
beneficial or not,--a thing, too, which is esteemed of the highest
importance by the Hellenes:--(for parents, as soon as their children are,
as they think, come to years of discretion, urge them to consider how
wealth may be acquired, since by riches the value of a man is judged):--
When, I say, we are thus in earnest, and you, who agree in other respects,
fall to disputing about a matter of such moment, that is, about wealth, and
not merely whether it is black or white, light or heavy, but whether it is
a good or an evil, whereby, although you are now the dearest of friends and
kinsmen, the most bitter hatred may arise betwixt you, I must hinder your
dissension to the best of my power. If I could, I would tell you the
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