| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: be fair). How clear and airy is the sound! The nerves are
harmonised and quieted; the mind attuned to silence; and observe
how easily and regularly beats the heart! Your unenlightened
doctor would see nothing in these sensations; and yet you yourself
perceive they are a part of health. - Did you remember your
cinchona this morning? Good. Cinchona also is a work of nature;
it is, after all, only the bark of a tree which we might gather for
ourselves if we lived in the locality. - What a world is this!
Though a professed atheist, I delight to bear my testimony to the
world. Look at the gratuitous remedies and pleasures that surround
our path! The river runs by the garden end, our bath, our
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: "Or they may have used wicker," the young lady went on,
undismayed. She seemed to concede a point. "Wicker IS
likelier."
"But surely," said the father of the family with the
expostulatory voice and gesture of one who would recall
erring wits to sanity, "it is far more impressive standing
out bare and noble as it does. In lonely splendour."
"But all this country may have been wooded then," said Sir
Richmond. "In which case it wouldn't have stood out. It
doesn't stand out so very much even now."
"You came to it through a grove," said the young lady,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: "Oh, the prophets hold over the patriarchs. The newest prophet,
even, is of a sight more consequence than the oldest patriarch.
Yes, sir, Adam himself has to walk behind Shakespeare."
"Was Shakespeare a prophet?"
"Of course he was; and so was Homer, and heaps more. But
Shakespeare and the rest have to walk behind a common tailor from
Tennessee, by the name of Billings; and behind a horse-doctor named
Sakka, from Afghanistan. Jeremiah, and Billings and Buddha walk
together, side by side, right behind a crowd from planets not in
our astronomy; next come a dozen or two from Jupiter and other
worlds; next come Daniel, and Sakka and Confucius; next a lot from
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