| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: vain that the daughters always spoke of him as "the old
gentleman," addressed him as "papa," in tones of infinite
softness, and endeavored to coax him into a dressing-gown and
slippers, and other gentlemanly habits. Do what they might,
there was no keeping down the butcher. His sturdy nature
would break through all their glozings. He had a hearty vulgar
good-humor that was irrepressible. His very jokes made his
sensitive daughters shudder; and he persisted in wearing his
blue cotton coat of a morning, dining at two o'clock, and
having a "bit of sausage with his tea."
He was doomed, however, to share the unpopularity of his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: to see, the kind of pneumatic pump that was used for the compressed
air affair, and then a lot of chaps and girls came in and danced
about me something disgraceful. It's extraordinary the different ways
different people have of showing respect. If I'd had a hatchet handy
I'd have gone for the lot of them--they made me feel that wild.
All this time I sat as stiff as company, not knowing anything better
to do. And at last, when nightfall came, and the wattle joss-house
place got a bit too shadowy for their taste--all these here savages
are afraid of the dark, you know--and I started a sort of 'Moo' noise,
they built big bonfires outside and left me alone in peace in the
darkness of my hut, free to unscrew my windows a bit and think
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: remains uncertain. In either case, the thoughts are partly borrowed from
the Funeral Oration of Thucydides; and the fact that they are so, is not in
favour of the genuineness of the work. Internal evidence seems to leave
the question of authorship in doubt. There are merits and there are
defects which might lead to either conclusion. The form of the greater
part of the work makes the enquiry difficult; the introduction and the
finale certainly wear the look either of Plato or of an extremely skilful
imitator. The excellence of the forgery may be fairly adduced as an
argument that it is not a forgery at all. In this uncertainty the express
testimony of Aristotle, who quotes, in the Rhetoric, the well-known words,
'It is easy to praise the Athenians among the Athenians,' from the Funeral
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