| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: misery between decks enhances the bravery of what was done by
giving it something for contrast. We like to know that these
bold and honest fellows contrived to live, and to keep bold
and honest, among absurd and vile surroundings. No reader can
forget the description of the THUNDER in RODERICK RANDOM: the
disorderly tyranny; the cruelty and dirt of officers and men;
deck after deck, each with some new object of offence; the
hospital, where the hammocks were huddled together with but
fourteen inches space for each; the cockpit, far under water,
where, "in an intolerable stench," the spectacled steward kept
the accounts of the different messes; and the canvas
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: As any mother's child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air:
Let them say more that like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
XXII
My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: revenges of life. Their speech, indeed, is timid; they report
lions in the path; they counsel a meticulous footing; but their
serene, marred faces are more eloquent and tell another story.
Where they have gone, we will go also, not very greatly fearing;
what they have endured unbroken, we also, God helping us, will make
a shift to bear.
Not only is the presence of the aged in itself remedial, but their
minds are stored with antidotes, wisdom's simples, plain
considerations overlooked by youth. They have matter to
communicate, be they never so stupid. Their talk is not merely
literature, it is great literature; classic in virtue of the
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