The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: account which I cannot but say not only seasoned those houses, as
they desired, but filled the air with very grateful and wholesome
smells which others had the share of the benefit of as well as those
who were at the expenses of them.
And yet after all, though the poor came to town very precipitantly,
as I have said, yet I must say the rich made no such haste. The men of
business, indeed, came up, but many of them did not bring their
families to town till the spring came on, and that they saw reason to
depend upon it that the plague would not return.
The Court, indeed, came up soon after Christmas, but the nobility
and gentry, except such as depended upon and had employment under
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: he produced.
As I say, he did not look it. He was narrow-hipped, narrow-shouldered, and
anaemic, while he seemed not so much oppressed by gloom as by a sweet and
gentle sadness, the weight of which was as sweetly and gently borne. For an
hour I had been trying to get a story out of him, but he appeared to lack
imagination. To him there was no romance in his gorgeous career, no deeds of
daring, no thrills--nothing but a gray sameness and infinite boredom.
Lions? Oh, yes! he had fought with them. It was nothing. All you had to do was
to stay sober. Anybody could whip a lion to a standstill with an ordinary
stick. He had fought one for half an hour once. Just hit him on the nose every
time he rushed, and when he got artful and rushed with his head down, why, the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: And you would infer that temperance is not only noble, but also good?
That is my opinion.
Well, I said; but surely you would agree with Homer when he says,
'Modesty is not good for a needy man'?
Yes, he said; I agree.
Then I suppose that modesty is and is not good?
Clearly.
But temperance, whose presence makes men only good, and not bad, is always
good?
That appears to me to be as you say.
And the inference is that temperance cannot be modesty--if temperance is a
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