| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth
upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: it more cruel to offer up victims to the gods than to torture them
in the vaults of the Holy Office or to immure them in the walls of
nunneries?
When I had lived a month in Tobasco I had learned enough of the
language to talk with Marina, with whom I grew friendly, though no
more, and it was from her that I gathered the most of my knowledge,
and also many hints as to the conduct necessary to my safety. In
return I taught her something of my own faith, and of the customs
of the Europeans, and it was the knowledge that she gained from me
which afterwards made her so useful to the Spaniards, and prepared
her to accept their religion, giving her insight into the ways of
Montezuma's Daughter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: things are, indeed, too common to be spoken of; and an hour's fishing
with any angler will teach you better, both for these and many other
common things in the practical part of angling, than a week's discourse.
I shall therefore conclude this direction for taking the Eel, by telling
you, that in a warm day in summer, I have taken many a good Eel by
Snigling, and have been much pleased with that sport.
And because you, that are but a young angler, know not what Snigling
is I will now teach it to you. You remember I told you that Eels do not
usually stir in the daytime; for then they hide themselves under some
covert; or under boards or planks about flood-gates, or weirs, or mills:
or in holes on the river banks: so that you, observing your time in a
|
