| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death by Patrick Henry: raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the
strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir,
we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late
to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery!
Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston!
The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--
but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps
from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!
Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle?
What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry: are wisest. They are the magi.
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE GIFT OF THE MAGI.
The Gift of the Magi |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: antagonists were animals inclined to crow before they had found any
corn--mere skimming-dishes in point of depth--whose
clear-sightedness consisted in supposing there was nothing behind a
barn-door because they couldn't see through it; so that, though
their controversy did not serve to elicit the fact concerning the
robbery, it elicited some true opinions of collateral importance.
But while poor Silas's loss served thus to brush the slow current of
Raveloe conversation, Silas himself was feeling the withering
desolation of that bereavement about which his neighbours were
arguing at their ease. To any one who had observed him before he
lost his gold, it might have seemed that so withered and shrunken a
Silas Marner |
