| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: great love of hers have been bestowed on such a man? None can say,
but so it was. Yet now that I think of it, there is one thing even
stranger than her faithfulness.
It will be remembered that when the fanatic priest struck her she
prayed that he also might die at such hands and more terribly than
she must do. So it came about. In after years that very man,
Father Pedro by name, was sent to convert the heathen of Anahuac,
among whom, because of his cruelty, he was known as the 'Christian
Devil.' But it chanced that venturing too far among a clan of the
Otomie before they were finally subdued, he fell into the hands of
some priests of the war god Huitzel, and by them was sacrificed
Montezuma's Daughter |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Sportsman by Xenophon: [14] Lit. "to be honoured ever living."
Peleus kindled in the gods desire to give him Thetis, and to hymn
their nuptials at the board of Cheiron.[15]
[15] For the marriage of Peleus and Thetis see Hom. "Il." xxiv. 61;
cf. Pope's rendering:
To grace those nuptials from the bright abode
Yourselves were present; when this minstrel god
(Well pleased to share the feast) amid the quire
Stood proud to hymn, and tune his youthful lyre
("Homer's Il." xxiv.)
Prof. Robinson Ellis ("Comment on Catull." lxiv.) cites numerous
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: EUTHYPHRO: Very true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then piety, Euthyphro, is an art which gods and men have of
doing business with one another?
EUTHYPHRO: That is an expression which you may use, if you like.
SOCRATES: But I have no particular liking for anything but the truth. I
wish, however, that you would tell me what benefit accrues to the gods from
our gifts. There is no doubt about what they give to us; for there is no
good thing which they do not give; but how we can give any good thing to
them in return is far from being equally clear. If they give everything
and we give nothing, that must be an affair of business in which we have
very greatly the advantage of them.
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