| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: out of the reach of wicked men, considering that if the society of the
good is a training in virtue so also is the society of the bad its
dissolution.
[7] In reference to some such tenet as that of Antisthenes ap. Diog.
Laert. VI. ix. 30, {areskei d' autois kai ten areten didakten
einai, katha phesin 'Antisthenes en to 'Rraklei kai anapobleton
uparkhein}. Cf. Plat. "Protag." 340 D, 344 D.
To this the poet[8] is a witness, who says:
"From the noble thou shalt be instructed in nobleness; but, and if
thou minglest with the base thou wilt destroy what wisdom thou
hast now";
The Memorabilia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: in favor of a radical policy. Listening to the doctrines of expediency
and compromise with pity, impatience, and disgust, they have everywhere
broken into demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm when a brave word
has been spoken in favor of equal rights and impartial suffrage.
Radicalism, so far from being odious, is not the popular passport to power.
The men most bitterly charged with it go to Congress with the
largest majorities, while the timid and doubtful are sent by lean majorities,
or else left at home. The strange controversy between the President
and the Congress, at one time so threatening, is disposed of by the people.
The high reconstructive powers which he so confidently, ostentatiously,
and haughtily claimed, have been disallowed, denounced, and utterly repudiated;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: stories she told me of the desert and its dangers, she came near
frightening herself into a fit. I don't remember half a quarter of
them, of course, for I paid little heed; but two come back to me
kind of clear.
About six miles up the coast there is a sheltered cove they call
FANGA-ANAANA - "the haven full of caves." I've seen it from the
sea myself, as near as I could get my boys to venture in; and it's
a little strip of yellow sand. Black cliffs overhang it, full of
the black mouths of caves; great trees overhang the cliffs, and
dangle-down lianas; and in one place, about the middle, a big brook
pours over in a cascade. Well, there was a boat going by here,
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