| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: On the evening in question the little scene acquired
an added poignancy by reminding him--he could not
have said why--of his leave-taking from Madame
Olenska after their confidential talk a week or ten days
earlier.
It would have been as difficult to discover any
resemblance between the two situations as between the
appearance of the persons concerned. Newland Archer
could not pretend to anything approaching the young
English actor's romantic good looks, and Miss Dyas
was a tall red-haired woman of monumental build
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: we not heard that the former are sprung from Heracles, and the latter from
Achaemenes, and that the race of Heracles and the race of Achaemenes go
back to Perseus, son of Zeus?
ALCIBIADES: Why, so does mine go back to Eurysaces, and he to Zeus!
SOCRATES: And mine, noble Alcibiades, to Daedalus, and he to Hephaestus,
son of Zeus. But, for all that, we are far inferior to them. For they are
descended 'from Zeus,' through a line of kings--either kings of Argos and
Lacedaemon, or kings of Persia, a country which the descendants of
Achaemenes have always possessed, besides being at various times sovereigns
of Asia, as they now are; whereas, we and our fathers were but private
persons. How ridiculous would you be thought if you were to make a display
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: from it in pursuit of beer, or linger on its sidewalk listening
to the voice of love. The cat's-meat man passes twice a day. An
occasional organ-grinder wanders in and wanders out again,
disgusted. In holiday-time the street is the arena of the young
bloods of the neighbourhood, and the householders have an
opportunity of studying the manly art of self-defence. And yet
Norfolk Street has one claim to be respectable, for it contains
not a single shop--unless you count the public-house at the
corner, which is really in the King's Road.
The door of No. 7 bore a brass plate inscribed with the legend
'W. D. Pitman, Artist'. It was not a particularly clean brass
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