| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: those who have the gift of reading. I will be very frank - I
believe it is so with all good books except, perhaps,
fiction. The average man lives, and must live, so wholly in
convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are more apt
to discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries
out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer
round that little idol of part-truths and part-conveniences
which is the contemporary deity, or he is convinced by what
is new, forgets what is old, and becomes truly blasphemous
and indecent himself. New truth is only useful to supplement
the old; rough truth is only wanted to expand, not to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: leisurely, via the Yellowstone, just in time for the tail-end of
the summer season at Saratoga.
We had met once or twice before in the park, and I had been
amazed and amused at her critical commendation of the wonders
that she saw. From that very resolute little mouth I received a
lecture on American literature, the nature and inwardness of
Washington society, the precise value of Cable's works as
compared with Uncle Remus Harris, and a few other things that had
nothing whatever to do with geysers, but were altogether
pleasant.
Now, an English maiden who had stumbled on a dust-grimed,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: that it makes your eyes water to look at it, and you've
been a considerable part of a week doing it, the green
country will look so like home and heaven to you that
it will make your eyes water AGAIN.
It was just so with me, and the same with Jim.
And when Jim got so he could believe it WAS the
land of Egypt he was looking at, he wouldn't enter it
standing up, but got down on his knees and took off
his hat, because he said it wasn't fitten' for a humble
poor nigger to come any other way where such men
had been as Moses and Joseph and Pharaoh and the
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