| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: sermon on the meaning of the manna in the wilderness can be adapted
to almost any occasion, joyful, or, as in the present case,
distressing. [All sigh.] I have preached it at harvest
celebrations, christenings, confirmations, on days of humiliation
and festal days. The last time I delivered it was in the
Cathedral, as a charity sermon on behalf of the Society for the
Prevention of Discontent among the Upper Orders. The Bishop, who
was present, was much struck by some of the analogies I drew.
JACK. Ah! that reminds me, you mentioned christenings I think, Dr.
Chasuble? I suppose you know how to christen all right? [DR.
CHASUBLE looks astounded.] I mean, of course, you are continually
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of
the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and
hickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow
footpath led down the hill. In my front yard grew the strawberry,
blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort and goldenrod, shrub
oaks and sand cherry, blueberry and groundnut. Near the end of May,
the sand cherry (Cerasus pumila) adorned the sides of the path with
its delicate flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically about its
short stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down with goodsized
and handsome cherries, fell over in wreaths like rays on every side.
I tasted them out of compliment to Nature, though they were scarcely
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: and talked among themselves as though there were no one else in the
boat; yet close beside them sat a man of great importance in the
district, a stout burgher of Bruges, wrapped about with a vast cloak.
His servant, armed to the teeth, had set down a couple of bags filled
with gold at his side. Next to the burgher came a man of learning, a
doctor of the University of Louvain, who was traveling with his clerk.
This little group of folk, who looked contemptuously at each other,
was separated from the passengers in the forward part of the boat by
the bench of rowers.
The belated traveler glanced about him as he stepped on board, saw
that there was no room for him in the stern, and went to the bows in
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