| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: screen. The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly
represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribable
difference which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so
much more attractive than the original. When wearied of this,
Aylmer bade her cast her eyes upon a vessel containing a quantity
of earth. She did so, with little interest at first; but was soon
startled to perceive the germ of a plant shooting upward from the
soil. Then came the slender stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded
themselves; and amid them was a perfect and lovely flower.
"It is magical!" cried Georgiana. "I dare not touch it."
"Nay, pluck it," answered Aylmer,--"pluck it, and inhale its
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: territory some forty miles long by fifty wide, and almost every
citizen in it seemed intent on buying or selling land, laying out
new roads, or locating some future city. John Calhoun, the county
surveyor, therefore, found himself with far more work than he
could personally attend to, and had to appoint deputies to assist
him. Learning the high esteem in which Lincoln was held by the
people of New Salem, he wisely concluded to make him a deputy,
although they differed in politics. It was a flattering offer,
and Lincoln accepted gladly. Of course he knew almost nothing
about surveying, but he got a compass and chain, and, as he tells
us, "studied Flint and Gibson a little, and went at it." The
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: In the modern stress of competition and struggle for place, such
sympathy is naturally rare, and is also very much stifled by the
immoral ideal of uniformity of type and conformity to rule which is
so prevalent everywhere, and is perhaps most obnoxious in England.
Sympathy with pain there will, of course, always be. It is one of
the first instincts of man. The animals which are individual, the
higher animals, that is to say, share it with us. But it must be
remembered that while sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of joy
in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the
amount of pain. It may make man better able to endure evil, but
the evil remains. Sympathy with consumption does not cure
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