| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: intended, to make the boys craftier and more inventive in getting in
supplies, whilst at the same time it cultivated their warlike
instincts. An objector may retort: "But if he thought it so fine a
feat to steal, why did he inflict all those blows on the unfortunate
who was caught?" My answer is: for the self-same reason which induces
people, in other matters which are taught, to punish the mal-
performance of a service. So they, the Lacedaemonians, visit penalties
on the boy who is detected thieving as being but a sorry bungler in
the art. So to steal as many cheeses as possible [off the shrine of
Orthia[17]] was a feat to be encouraged; but, at the same moment,
others were enjoined to scourge the thief, which would point a moral
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: and the Admiral, fearing he might not have been civil enough,
took up the subject again, to say--
"The next time you write to your good father, Miss Elliot,
pray give him my compliments and Mrs Croft's, and say that we are
settled here quite to our liking, and have no fault at all to find
with the place. The breakfast-room chimney smokes a little,
I grant you, but it is only when the wind is due north and blows hard,
which may not happen three times a winter. And take it altogether,
now that we have been into most of the houses hereabouts and can judge,
there is not one that we like better than this. Pray say so,
with my compliments. He will be glad to hear it."
Persuasion |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: By their nephews and their nieces.
XXVIII
Foreign Children
Little Indian, Sioux, or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don't you wish that you were me?
You have seen the scarlet trees
And the lions over seas;
You have eaten ostrich eggs,
And turned the turtle off their legs.
A Child's Garden of Verses |
