| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: way out of life, if one chose to take it. But she
did not want to die. She wanted to live and
dream--a hundred years, forever! As long as
this sweetness welled up in her heart, as long as
her breast could hold this treasure of pain! She
felt as the pond must feel when it held the moon
like that; when it encircled and swelled with
In the morning, when Emil came down-
stairs, Alexandra met him in the sitting-room
and put her hands on his shoulders. "Emil, I
O Pioneers! |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: east, from off some lofty plateau of Central Asia, driven out by the
increasing cold, which left them but two mouths of summer to ten of
winter.
They despised at first--would that they had despised always!--the
luxurious life of the dwellers in the plains, and the effeminate
customs of the Medes--a branch of their own race who had conquered
and intermarried with the Turanian, or Finnish tribes; and adopted
much of their creed, as well as of their morals, throughout their
vast but short-lived Median Empire. "Soft countries," said Cyrus
himself--so runs the tale--"gave birth to small men. No region
produced at once delightful fruits and men of a war-like spirit."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: Catholic testimony. Here is a passage from my diary about my visit
to the Chinatown, from which you will see how it is (even now)
regarded by its own officials: "We went round all the dormitories,
refectories, etc. - dark and dingy enough, with a superficial
cleanliness, which he" [Mr. Dutton, the lay-brother] "did not seek
to defend. 'It is almost decent,' said he; 'the sisters will make
that all right when we get them here.' " And yet I gathered it was
already better since Damien was dead, and far better than when he
was there alone and had his own (not always excellent) way. I have
now come far enough to meet you on a common ground of fact; and I
tell you that, to a mind not prejudiced by jealousy, all the
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