| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Call of the Wild by Jack London: them, who had scented the camp from some Indian village. They had
crept in while Buck and Spitz were fighting, and when the two men
sprang among them with stout clubs they showed their teeth and
fought back. They were crazed by the smell of the food. Perrault
found one with head buried in the grub-box. His club landed
heavily on the gaunt ribs, and the grub-box was capsized on the
ground. On the instant a score of the famished brutes were
scrambling for the bread and bacon. The clubs fell upon them
unheeded. They yelped and howled under the rain of blows, but
struggled none the less madly till the last crumb had been
devoured.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: will prove most potent to preserve the interests of their friends and
to damage those of their opponents.
[8] Or, "that lie upon your borders," as Thebes and Megara were "nigh-
bordering" to Athens. Cf. Eur. "Rhes." 426; Soph. "Fr." 349.
And when, finally, the citizens discover it is not the habit of these
mercenaries to injure those who do no wrong, but their vocation rather
is to hinder all attempts at evil-doing; whereby they exercise a
kindly providence and bear the brunt of danger on behalf of the
community, I say it must needs be, the citizens will rejoice to pay
the expenses which the force entails. At any rate, it is for objects
of far less importance that at present guards[9] are kept in private
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: Without wishing to offend these banished men, it may be allowable to
remark that the light-hearted, careless inconsistency of the Sarmatian
character does justify in some degree the satire of the Parisians,
who, by the bye, would behave in like circumstances exactly as the
Poles do. The French aristocracy, so nobly succored during the
Revolution by the Polish lords, certainly did not return the kindness
in 1832. Let us have the melancholy courage to admit this, and to say
that the faubourg Saint-Germain is still the debtor of Poland.
Was Comte Adam rich, or was he poor, or was he an adventurer? This
problem was long unsolved. The diplomatic salons, faithful to
instructions, imitated the silence of the Emperor Nicholas, who held
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