| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: to be sent to President Roosevelt, the other was a gift to Major
Conger. Similar photographs had been sent to all the ministers
and rulers represented at Peking, and I said to myself: "The
Empress Dowager is shrewd. She knows that false pictures of her
have gone forth. She knows that the painted portrait is not a
good likeness, and so she proposes to have genuine pictures in
the possession of all civilized governments." This shrewdness was
not necessarily native on her part, but was engendered by the
arguments that had been used by those who induced her to be the
first Chinese monarch to have her portrait painted by a foreign
artist.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And that would seem to be as much as there will ever be.
"Fifty years ago it was we found it where it sat." --
And forty years ago it was old Archibald said that.
"An apple tree that's yet alive saw something, I suppose,
Of what it was that happened there, and what no mortal knows.
Some one on the mountain heard far off a master shriek,
And then there was a light that showed the way for men to seek.
"We found it in the morning with an iron bar behind,
And there were chains around it; but no search could ever find,
Either in the ashes that were left, or anywhere,
A sign to tell of who or what had been with Stafford there.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: fell into line eight deep, acting as a screen to the rest of his
troops. Pausanias, on his side, had retired, sorely pressed, about
half a mile towards a bit of rising ground, where he sent orders to
the Lacedaemonians and the other allied troops to bring up
reinforcements. Here, on this slope, he reformed his troops, giving
his phalanx the full depth, and advanced against the Athenians, who
did not hesitate to receive him at close quarters, but presently had
to give way; one portion being forced into the mud and clay at
Halae,[18] while the others wavered and broke their line; one hundred
and fifty of them were left dead on the field, whereupon Pausanias set
up a trophy and retired. Not even so, were his feelings embittered
|
