| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: should be chosen, not for their freedom from evil, but for their
possession of good. The chance and scattered evil that may here and
there haunt, or hide itself in, a powerful book, never does any harm
to a noble girl; but the emptiness of an author oppresses her, and
his amiable folly degrades her. And if she can have access to a
good library of old and classical books, there need be no choosing
at all. Keep the modern magazine and novel out of your girl's way:
turn her loose into the old library every wet day, and let her
alone. She will find what is good for her; you cannot: for there
is just this difference between the making of a girl's character and
a boy's--you may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: were the remnant of the Doasyoulikes, doing as they liked, as
before. They were too lazy to move away from the mountain; so they
said, If it has blown up once, that is all the more reason that it
should not blow up again. And they were few in number: but they
only said, The more the merrier, but the fewer the better fare.
However, that was not quite true; for all the flapdoodle-trees were
killed by the volcano, and they had eaten all the roast pigs, who,
of course, could not be expected to have little ones. So they had
to live very hard, on nuts and roots which they scratched out of
the ground with sticks. Some of them talked of sowing corn, as
their ancestors used to do, before they came into the land of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: artist (so to speak) at the easel, and pass the afternoon
with him in a generous emulation, making coloured drawings.
On one of these occasions, I made the map of an island; it
was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully coloured; the
shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained
harbours that pleased me like sonnets; and with the
unconsciousness of the predestined, I ticketed my performance
'Treasure Island.' I am told there are people who do not
care for maps, and find it hard to believe. The names, the
shapes of the woodlands, the courses of the roads and rivers,
the prehistoric footsteps of man still distinctly traceable
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