| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: You may go as a wader, stepping into the stream and going down with
it, through rapids and shallows and deeper pools, until you come to
the end of your courage and the daylight. Of these three ways I
know not which is best. But in all of them the essential thing is
that you must be willing and glad to be led; you must take the
little river for your guide, philosopher, and friend.
And what a good guidance it gives you. How cheerfully it lures you
on into the secrets of field and wood, and brings you acquainted
with the birds and the flowers. The stream can show you, better
than any other teacher, how nature works her enchantments with
colour and music.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: answer in all cases is the same--that the laws of nature are uniform,
though the consistency or continuity of them is not always perceptible to
us. The superficial appearances of language, as of nature, are irregular,
but we do not therefore deny their deeper uniformity. The comparison of
the growth of language in the individual and in the nation cannot be wholly
discarded, for nations are made up of individuals. But in this, as in the
other political sciences, we must distinguish between collective and
individual actions or processes, and not attribute to the one what belongs
to the other. Again, when we speak of the hereditary or paternity of a
language, we must remember that the parents are alive as well as the
children, and that all the preceding generations survive (after a manner)
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: had floated on it in flood-time from his father's cabin into
Springfield. A few weeks later its rapidly falling waters landed
him on the dam at Rutledge's mill, introducing him effectively if
unceremoniously to the inhabitants of New Salem. Now it was again
to play a part in his life, starting him on a political career
that ended only in the White House. Surely no insignificant
stream has had a greater influence on the history of a famous
man. It was a winding and sluggish creek, encumbered with
driftwood and choked by sand-bars; but it flowed through a
country already filled with ambitious settlers, where the roads
were atrociously bad, becoming in rainy seasons wide seas of
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