| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: the high lattice, across the encumbered shelf that her forearm
ached with rubbing. This transparent screen fenced out or fenced
in, according to the side of the narrow counter on which the human
lot was cast, the duskiest corner of a shop pervaded not a little,
in winter, by the poison of perpetual gas, and at all times by the
presence of hams, cheese, dried fish, soap, varnish, paraffin and
other solids and fluids that she came to know perfectly by their
smells without consenting to know them by their names.
The barrier that divided the little post-and-telegraph-office from
the grocery was a frail structure of wood and wire; but the social,
the professional separation was a gulf that fortune, by a stroke
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: CRITIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then you think that a man may gain wealth by bad and disgraceful
means, and, having obtained the aid of medicine which enables him to
acquire the power of hearing, may use that very faculty for the acquisition
of virtue?
CRITIAS: Yes, I do.
SOCRATES: But can that which is evil be useful for virtue?
CRITIAS: No.
SOCRATES: It is not therefore necessary that the means by which we obtain
what is useful for a certain object should always be useful for the same
object: for it seems that bad actions may sometimes serve good purposes?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: pickled up in small casks, and sold, not in London only, but I have
known a firkin of Suffolk butter sent to the West Indies, and
brought back to England again, and has been perfectly good and
sweet, as at first.
The port for the shipping off their Suffolk butter is chiefly
Woodbridge, which for that reason is full of corn factors and
butter factors, some of whom are very considerable merchants.
From hence, turning down to the shore, we see Orfordness, a noted
point of land for the guide of the colliers and coasters, and a
good shelter for them to ride under when a strong north-east wind
blows and makes a foul shore on the coast.
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