| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: receive him. For nature's beauties are too well recognized to
remain the exclusive property of the first chance lover. People
flock to view nature as we do to see a play, and privacy is as
impossible as it is unsought. Indeed, the aversion to publicity is
simply a result of the sense of self, and therefore necessarily not
a feature of so impersonal a civilization. Aesthetic guidebooks
are written for the nature-enamoured, descriptive of these views
which the Japanese translator quaintly calls "Sceneries," and which
visitors come not only from near but from far to gaze upon. In
front of the tea-house proper are rows of summer pavilions, in one
of which the party make themselves at home, while gentle little
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: these before me,[6] I should be better able to describe the points of
difference which exist between the one life and the other.
[5] Simonides is still in the chrysalis or grub condition of private
citizenship; he has not broken the shell as yet of ordinary
manhood.
[6] Lit. "in that case, I think I should best be able to point out the
'differentia' of either."
Thus it was that Simonides spoke first: Well then, as to private
persons, for my part I observe,[7] or seem to have observed, that we
are liable to various pains and pleasures, in the shape of sights,
sounds, odours, meats, and drinks, which are conveyed through certain
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: There was only one drawback to the hilarity of the occasion. The
band, which was usually imported from Sandy River Forks for such
festivities,--a fiddle, a cornet, a flute, and an accordion,--had
not arrived. There was a general idea that the mail-sleigh, in
which the musicians were to travel, had been delayed by the storm,
and might break its way through the snow-drifts and arrive at any
moment. But Bill Moody, who was naturally of a pessimistic
temperament, had offered a different explanation.
"I tell ye, old Baker's got that blame' band down to his hotel at
the Falls now, makin' 'em play fer his party. Them music fellers is
onsartin; can't trust 'em to keep anythin' 'cept the toon, and they
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