| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: into my hand. I read it, then sat pondering. He sighed
with pain, pushed all aside and presently bade the secretary
forth. When the man was gone he told me of an agony
behind his eyes that now stabbed and now laid him in a
drowsiness. I did what I could for him then waited until
the access was over. It passed, and he took again his pen.
I said, ``You advise that there be made a market for
Carib slaves, balancing thus the negroes the Portuguese are
bringing in, and providing a fund for our needs--''
He said, ``They are eaters of men's flesh, intractable and
abominable, not like the gentler people we find hereabouts!
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: in a tone of much candour and tolerance. "There's folks, i' my
opinion, they can't see ghos'es, not if they stood as plain as a
pike-staff before 'em. And there's reason i' that. For there's my
wife, now, can't smell, not if she'd the strongest o' cheese under
her nose. I never see'd a ghost myself; but then I says to myself,
"Very like I haven't got the smell for 'em." I mean, putting a
ghost for a smell, or else contrairiways. And so, I'm for holding
with both sides; for, as I say, the truth lies between 'em. And if
Dowlas was to go and stand, and say he'd never seen a wink o'
Cliff's Holiday all the night through, I'd back him; and if anybody
said as Cliff's Holiday was certain sure, for all that, I'd back
Silas Marner |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: them conveyed to some place of safety; or he would entrust them to the
care of fellow-prisoners also left behind on account of old age; in no
case must they be left to ravening dogs and wolves. In this way he won
the goodwill not only of those who heard tell of these doings but of
the prisoners themselves. And whenever he brought over a city to his
side, he set the citizens free from the harsher service of a bondsman
to his lord, imposing the gentler obedience of a freeman to his ruler.
Indeed, there were fortresses impregnable to assault which he brought
under his power by the subtler force of human kindness.
[10] See Grote, vol. ix. p. 365 foll.
But when, in Phrygia even, the freedom of his march along the flats
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