| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: "Another gone: O when will ye arise?"
IN MAXIMUM
WOULDST thou be free? I think it not, indeed;
But if thou wouldst, attend this simple rede:
When quite contented }thou canst dine at home
Thou shall be free when }
And drink a small wine of the march of Rome;
When thou canst see unmoved thy neighbour's plate,
And wear my threadbare toga in the gate;
When thou hast learned to love a small abode,
And not to choose a mistress A LA MODE:
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: their deserted abodes. For some time Little Britain became the
great mart of learning, and was peopled by the busy and
prolific race of booksellers; these also gradually deserted it,
and, emigrating beyond the great strait of Newgate Street,
settled down in Paternoster Row and St. Paul's Churchyard,
where they continue to increase and multiply even at the
present day.
But though thus falling into decline, Little Britain still bears
traces of its former splendor. There are several houses ready
to tumble down, the fronts of which are magnificently enriched
with old oaken carvings of hideous faces, unknown birds,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: Sometimes they rose straight up out of the lake,
and towered aloft and overshadowed our pygmy steamer
with their prodigious bulk in the most impressive way.
Not snow-clad mountains, these, yet they climbed high
enough toward the sky to meet the clouds and veil their
foreheads in them. They were not barren and repulsive,
but clothed in green, and restful and pleasant to the eye.
And they were so almost straight-up-and-down, sometimes,
that one could not imagine a man being able to keep
his footing upon such a surface, yet there are paths,
and the Swiss people go up and down them every day.
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