| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: seek a landing-place. There was a crooked channel of deep water
which led close up against the shore.
"There, you hold fast for'ard there, an' wait for her to lift
on the wave. You'll make a good landin' if you're smart; right on
the port-hand side!" the captain called excitedly; and I, standing
ready with high ambition, seized my chance and leaped over to the
grassy bank.
"I'm beat if I ain't aground after all!" mourned the captain
despondently.
But I could reach the bowsprit, and he pushed with the boat-
hook, while the wind veered round a little as if on purpose and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: his contemporaries, and with the general state of thought and feeling
prevalent in his age. Afterwards comes the remoter light which they cast
on one another. We begin to feel that the ancients had the same thoughts
as ourselves, the same difficulties which characterize all periods of
transition, almost the same opposition between science and religion.
Although we cannot maintain that ancient and modern philosophy are one and
continuous (as has been affirmed with more truth respecting ancient and
modern history), for they are separated by an interval of a thousand years,
yet they seem to recur in a sort of cycle, and we are surprised to find
that the new is ever old, and that the teaching of the past has still a
meaning for us.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: place over the Downs beyond, too far, and so he meandered towards
Petworth, posing himself perpetually and loitering, gathering
wild flowers and wondering why they had no names--for he had
never heard of any--dropping them furtively at the sight of a
stranger, and generally 'mucking about.' There were purple
vetches in the hedges, meadowsweet, honeysuckle, belated
brambles--but the dog-roses had already gone; there were green
and red blackberries, stellarias, and dandelions, and in another
place white dead nettles, traveller's-joy, clinging bedstraw,
grasses flowering, white campions, and ragged robins. One
cornfield was glorious with poppies, bright scarlet and purple
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