| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: Harnish, corning next, had tossed in five hundred dollars, with
the remark to MacDonald that he was letting him in easy.
MacDonald, glancing again at his hand, put in a thousand in
markers. Kearns, debating a long time over his hand, finally
"saw." It then cost French Louis nine hundred to remain in the
game, which he contributed after a similar debate. It cost
Campbell likewise nine hundred to remain and draw cards, but to
the surprise of all he saw the nine hundred and raised another
thousand.
"You-all are on the grade at last," Harnish remarked, as he saw
the fifteen hundred and raised a thousand in turn. "Helen
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: would be right in inviting me to perform this duty; but as we are all in
the same perplexity, why should one of us be preferred to another? I
certainly think that no one should; and under these circumstances, let me
offer you a piece of advice (and this need not go further than ourselves).
I maintain, my friends, that every one of us should seek out the best
teacher whom he can find, first for ourselves, who are greatly in need of
one, and then for the youth, regardless of expense or anything. But I
cannot advise that we remain as we are. And if any one laughs at us for
going to school at our age, I would quote to them the authority of Homer,
who says, that
'Modesty is not good for a needy man.'
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: very moderately wealthy, the wives and daughters of shopkeepers or
professional men, who if their male relations will supply them with a very
limited amount of money without exertion on their part, will become as
completely parasitic and useless as women with untold wealth at their
command.)
The debilitating effect of unlaboured-for wealth lies, then, not in the
nature of any material adjunct to life in itself, but in the power it may
possess of robbing the individual of all incentive to exertion, thus
destroying the intellectual, the physical, and finally, the moral fibre.
In all the civilisations of the past examination will show that almost
invariably it has been the female who has tended first to reach this point,
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