| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: thoughts, nor perplexed with originality, who could have
anticipated that our friend would entitle himself to a foremost
place among the doers of eccentric deeds? Had his acquaintances
been asked, who was the man in London the surest to perform
nothing today which should be remembered on the morrow, they
would have thought of Wakefield. Only the wife of his bosom might
have hesitated. She, without having analyzed his character, was
partly aware of a quiet selfishness, that had rusted into his
inactive mind; of a peculiar sort of vanity, the most uneasy
attribute about him; of a disposition to craft which had seldom
produced more positive effects than the keeping of petty secrets,
Twice Told Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: MENALCAS
Ay, then, I warrant, when they saw me slash
Micon's young vines and trees with spiteful hook.
DAMOETAS
Or here by these old beeches, when you broke
The bow and arrows of Damon; for you chafed
When first you saw them given to the boy,
Cross-grained Menalcas, ay, and had you not
Done him some mischief, would have chafed to death.
MENALCAS
With thieves so daring, what can masters do?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: To them, therefore, I assign in my speech the first place, and the second
to those who fought and conquered in the sea fights at Salamis and
Artemisium; for of them, too, one might have many things to say--of the
assaults which they endured by sea and land, and how they repelled them. I
will mention only that act of theirs which appears to me to be the noblest,
and which followed that of Marathon and came nearest to it; for the men of
Marathon only showed the Hellenes that it was possible to ward off the
barbarians by land, the many by the few; but there was no proof that they
could be defeated by ships, and at sea the Persians retained the reputation
of being invincible in numbers and wealth and skill and strength. This is
the glory of the men who fought at sea, that they dispelled the second
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