| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: stared in front of him--fright, I suppose. He must have been a big
strapping devil before he was taken down.
"Well, I tell you, we'd just got him fixed up, and the Captain was just
going into his tent to have a drink, and we chaps were all standing round,
when up steps Halket, right before the Captain, and pulls his front lock--
you know the way he has? Oh, my God, my God, if you could have seen it!
I'll never forget it to my dying day!" The Colonial seemed bursting with
internal laughter. "He begins, 'Sir, may I speak to you?' in a formal kind
of way, like a fellow introducing a deputation; and then all of a sudden he
starts off--oh, my God, you never heard such a thing! It was like a boy in
Sunday-school saying up a piece of Scripture he's learnt off by heart, and
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st.
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:
Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.
CXXVII
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon: There is another precaution which I feel called upon to note. Some
generals,[12] in attacking a force which they imagine to be inferior
to their own, will advance with a ridiculously insufficient force,[13]
so that it is the merest accident if they do not experience the injury
they were minded to inflict. Conversely, in attacking any enemy whose
superiority is a well-known fact, they will bring the whole of their
force into action.
[12] Or, "one knows of generals," e.g. Iphicrates at Oneion, 369 B.C.
Cf. "Hell." VI. v. 51.
[13] Lit. "an absolutely weak force."
Now, my maxim would be precisely converse: if you attack with a
|
