| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: often save whole cities, and yet you despise him, and would not allow your
son to marry his daughter, or his son to marry yours. But what reason is
there in this? For if virtue only means the saving of life, whether your
own or another's, you have no right to despise him or any practiser of
saving arts. But is not virtue something different from saving and being
saved? I would have you rather consider whether you ought not to disregard
length of life, and think only how you can live best, leaving all besides
to the will of Heaven. For you must not expect to have influence either
with the Athenian Demos or with Demos the son of Pyrilampes, unless you
become like them. What do you say to this?
'There is some truth in what you are saying, but I do not entirely believe
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lemorne Versus Huell by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard: except when she introduced some acquaintance to fulfill her
matronizing duties. As I was no dancer I was left alone most of the
time, and amused myself by gliding from window to window along the
wall, that it might not be observed that I was a fixed flower.
Still I suffered the annoyance of being stared at by wandering
squads of young gentlemen, the "curled darlings" of the ball-room.
I borrowed Mrs. Bliss's fan in one of her visits for a protection.
With that, and the embrasure of a remote window where I finally
stationed myself, I hoped to escape further notice. The music of
the celebrated band which played between the dances recalled the
chorus of spirits which charmed Faust:
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: one morning to an enormous amphitheater, which instead of having
been built upon the surface of the ground was excavated below
the surface. it had partially filled with debris so that how
large it had originally been was difficult to say. In its
present condition it held the entire twenty thousand Warhoons
of the assembled hordes.
The arena was immense but extremely uneven and unkempt.
Around it the Warhoons had piled building stone from
some of the ruined edifices of the ancient city to prevent
the animals and the captives from escaping into the
audience, and at each end had been constructed cages
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