| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: board their respective war-ships, and these began to get up steam.
About midnight, in a pouring rain, Pelly communicated to Fritze his
intention to follow him and protect British interests; and Knappe
replied that he would come on board the LIZARD and see de Coetlogon
personally. It was deep in the small hours, and de Coetlogon had
been long asleep, when he was wakened to receive his colleague; but
he started up with an old soldier's readiness. The conference was
long. De Coetlogon protested, as he did afterwards in writing,
against Knappe's claim: the Samoans were in a state of war; they
had territorial rights; it was monstrous to prevent them from
entering one of their own villages because a German trader kept the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Rate higher than you rate yourselves;
It pays, it flatters, and it's new.
"And though your very flesh and blood
Be what your Eagle eats and drinks,
You'll praise him for the best of birds,
Not knowing what the Eagle thinks.
"The power is yours, but not the sight;
You see not upon what you tread;
You have the ages for your guide,
But not the wisdom to be led.
"Think you to tread forever down
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: be invited to take part in the consultation. He is a stranger to
Lysimachus, but is afterwards recognised as the son of his old friend
Sophroniscus, with whom he never had a difference to the hour of his death.
Socrates is also known to Nicias, to whom he had introduced the excellent
Damon, musician and sophist, as a tutor for his son, and to Laches, who had
witnessed his heroic behaviour at the battle of Delium (compare Symp.).
Socrates, as he is younger than either Nicias or Laches, prefers to wait
until they have delivered their opinions, which they give in a
characteristic manner. Nicias, the tactician, is very much in favour of
the new art, which he describes as the gymnastics of war--useful when the
ranks are formed, and still more useful when they are broken; creating a
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