| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde: Early the next morning the Mayor was walking in the square below in
company with the Town Councillors. As they passed the column he
looked up at the statue: "Dear me! how shabby the Happy Prince
looks!" he said.
"How shabby indeed!" cried the Town Councillors, who always agreed
with the Mayor; and they went up to look at it.
"The ruby has fallen out of his sword, his eyes are gone, and he is
golden no longer," said the Mayor in fact, "he is litttle beter
than a beggar!"
"Little better than a beggar," said the Town Councillors.
"And here is actually a dead bird at his feet!" continued the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: parishioners; and even judges have been known to retire. To an
open mind, it will appear (upon the whole) less strange that
Joseph Finsbury should have been led to entertain ideas of
escape. His lot (I think we may say) was not a happy one. My
friend, Mr Morris, with whom I travel up twice or thrice a week
from Snaresbrook Park, is certainly a gentleman whom I esteem;
but he was scarce a model nephew. As for John, he is of course an
excellent fellow; but if he was the only link that bound one to a
home, I think the most of us would vote for foreign travel. In
the case of Joseph, John (if he were a link at all) was not the
only one; endearing bonds had long enchained the old gentleman to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: and the sight of the mother struck me like a revelation. She sat
there, all sloth and contentment, blinking under the strong
sunshine, branded with a passive enjoyment, a creature set quite
apart, before whom my ardour fell away like a thing ashamed. I
stopped a moment, and, commanding such shaken tones as I was able,
said a word or two. She looked at me with her unfathomable
kindness; her voice in reply sounded vaguely out of the realm of
peace in which she slumbered, and there fell on my mind, for the
first time, a sense of respect for one so uniformly innocent and
happy, and I passed on in a kind of wonder at myself, that I should
be so much disquieted.
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