| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: But if you go into the court without,
My almoner shall from my private purse,
Divide a hundred ducats 'mongst you all.
FIRST CITIZEN
God save the Duchess, say I.
SECOND CITIZEN
God save her.
DUCHESS
And every Monday morn shall bread be set
For those who lack it.
[Citizens applaud and go out.]
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: work like galley-slaves. No one demands it, but we set ourselves to build
a great dam in red sand beyond the graves. In the grey dawn before the
sheep are let out we work at it. All day, while the young ostriches we
tend feed about us, we work on through the fiercest heat. The people
wonder what new spirit has seized us now. They do not know we are working
for life. We bear the greatest stones, and feel a satisfaction when we
stagger under them, and are hurt by a pang that shoots through our chest.
While we eat our dinner we carry on baskets full of earth, as though the
devil drove us. The Kaffer servants have a story that at night a witch and
two white oxen come to help us. No wall, they say, could grow so quickly
under one man's hands.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]: "Go on," urged Tattine; "Go on," urged Mabel, and Rudolph applied his sapling
whip with might and main, but all to no effect. Meantime some geese from a
neighboring farm had come sailing out into the ford, to have a look at their
friends in the crate, and the geese in the crate, wild to be out on the water
with their comrades, craned their long necks far out between the laths, and
set up a tremendous squawking. It was rather a comical situation, and the
children laughed till their sides ached, but after a while it ceased to be so
funny. The clouds were rolling up blacker, and there was an occasional flash
of lightning far off in the distance, but Barney stood still obdurate and
unmoved, simply revelling in the sensation of the cool water, running
down-stream against his four little donkey-legs. At last Rudolph was at his
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