| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: out my note-book and pawed around among the floral tributes,
turn-ing up the tickets on the wreaths and seeing who had sent
them. In the middle of this I heard some one saying: "Please,
oh, please!" behind me, and there stood the daughter of the
house, just bathed in tears--I--You unmitigated brute!
HE--Pretty much what I felt myself. "I'm very sorry, miss," I
said, "to intrude on the privacy of your grief. Trust me, I
shall make it as little painful as possible."
I--But by what conceivable right did you outrage--HE--Hold your
horses. I'm telling you. Well, she didn't want me in the house
at all, and between her sobs fairly waved me away. I had half
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: their defence of their country against the invasion of Eumolpus and the
Amazons, or of their defence of the Argives against the Cadmeians, or of
the Heracleids against the Argives; besides, the poets have already
declared in song to all mankind their glory, and therefore any
commemoration of their deeds in prose which we might attempt would hold a
second place. They already have their reward, and I say no more of them;
but there are other worthy deeds of which no poet has worthily sung, and
which are still wooing the poet's muse. Of these I am bound to make
honourable mention, and shall invoke others to sing of them also in lyric
and other strains, in a manner becoming the actors. And first I will tell
how the Persians, lords of Asia, were enslaving Europe, and how the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: my sack, called for a "tab," and drew me over to the scales, where
the weigher nonchalantly cashed him out fifty dollars in dust.
"And now we'll drink," he said; and later, at the bar, when he
lowered his glass: "Reminds me of a little brew I had up Tattarat
way. No, you have no knowledge of the place, nor is it down on the
charts. But it's up by the rim of the Arctic Sea, not so many
hundred miles from the American line, and all of half a thousand
God-forsaken souls live there, giving and taking in marriage, and
starving and dying in-between-whiles. Explorers have overlooked
them, and you will not find them in the census of 1890. A whale-
ship was pinched there once, but the men, who had made shore over
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