| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: he consented to guide me to a point from which I could see
the plain where lay the city. To my surprise the distance
was but short from the beach where I had again met Ja.
It was evident that I had spent much time following the
windings of a tortuous canon, while just beyond the ridge
lay the city of Phutra near to which I must have come
several times.
As we topped the ridge and saw the granite gate towers
dotting the flowered plain at our feet Ja made a final
effort to persuade me to abandon my mad purpose and
return with him to Anoroc, but I was firm in my resolve,
At the Earth's Core |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: chattels, which are at once a trouble and a benefit. If painful to
their owners to possess, they are none the less a source of pain to
part with.
[15] Lit. "good but fearful (i.e. he makes one fear), he will some day
do some desperate mischief."
VII
Now when he had heard these reasonings, Simonides replied: O Hiero,
there is a potent force, it would appear, the name of which is honour,
so attractive that human beings strain to grasp it,[1] and in the
effort they will undergo all pains, endure all perils. It would
further seem that even you, you tyrants, in spite of all that sea of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: the great ancestor of the present family of the Dukes of Bolton.
This house, garrisoned by a resolute band of old soldiers, was a
great curb to the rebels of the Parliament party almost through
that whole war; till it was, after a vigorous defence, yielded to
the conquerors by the inevitable fate of things at that time. The
old house is, indeed, demolished but the successor of the family,
the first Duke of Bolton, has erected a very noble fabric in the
same place, or near it, which, however, is not equal to the
magnificence which fame gives to the ancient house, whose strength
of building only, besides the outworks, withstood the battery of
cannon in several attacks, and repulsed the Roundheads three or
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