| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was
apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas, for little
bubbles were continually ascending from the depths of the
glasses, and bursting in silvery spray at the surface. As the
liquor diffused a pleasant perfume, the old people doubted not
that it possessed cordial and comfortable properties; and though
utter sceptics as to its rejuvenescent power, they were inclined
to swallow it at once. But Dr. Heidegger besought them to stay a
moment.
"Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "it
would be well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct
Twice Told Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: mind he was not out of his reckoning in this matter more than
elsehwere. At any rate, it would be hard to discover a healthier or
more completely developed human being, physically speaking, than the
Spartan. Their gymnastic training, in fact, makes demands alike on the
legs and arms and neck,[13] etc., simultaneously.
[12] I.e. "not inferior in excellence to the diet which they enjoyed."
The reading here adopted I owe to Dr. Arnold Hug, {os me ponous
auton elattous ton sition gignesthai}.
[13] See Plat. "Laws," vii. 796 A; Jowett, "Plato," v. p. 365; Xen.
"Symp." ii. 7; Plut. "Lycurg." 19.
VI
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: she had one, which I was inclined to doubt, even though she
told me that she had once been a babe and hidden by her mother.
I had come to doubt if there was such a thing as a mother in
Caspak, a mother such as we know. From the Bo-lu to the Kro-lu
there is no word which corresponds with our word mother.
They speak of ata and cor sva jo, meaning reproduction
and from the beginning, and point toward the south; but no
one has a mother.
After considerable difficulty we gained what we thought was our
cave, only to find that it was not, and then we realized that
we were lost in the labyrinthine mazes of the great cavern.
The People That Time Forgot |
