| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: ability I have, helped one layman to be better! I would be
satisfied, thank God, and be quite willing then to let all my
little books perish.
Whether the making of many great books is an art and a benefit
to the Church, I leave others to judge. But I believe that if I
were minded to make great books according to their art, I could,
with God's help, do it more readily perhaps than they could
prepare a little discourse after my fashion. If accomplishment
were as easy as persecution, Christ would long since have been
cast out of heaven again, and God's throne itself overturned.
Although we cannot all be writers, we all want to be critics.
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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: voices rose slightly with the maidens' cheek flushes. I watched,
wishing to stay, and the youths drank till their speech thickened
and their eye-balls grew watery. It was sickening to see,
because I knew what was going to happen. My friend eyed the
group, and said:--"Maybe they're children of respectable people.
I hardly think, though, they'd be allowed out without any better
escort than these boys. And yet the place is a place where every
one comes, as you see. They may be Little Immoralities--in which
case they wouldn't be so hopelessly overcome with two glasses of
wine. They may be--"
Whatever they were they got indubitably drunk--there in that
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: "Noansense!" he said. "You and your noansense! What do I want with a
Christian faim'ly? I want Christian broth! Get me a lass that can
plain-boil a potato, if she was a whure off the streets." And with
these words, which echoed in her tender ears like blasphemy, he had
passed on to his study and shut the door behind him.
Such was the housewifery in George Square. It was better at Hermiston,
where Kirstie Elliott, the sister of a neighbouring bonnet-laird, and an
eighteenth cousin of the lady's, bore the charge of all, and kept a trim
house and a good country table. Kirstie was a woman in a thousand,
clean, capable, notable; once a moorland Helen, and still comely as a
blood horse and healthy as the hill wind. High in flesh and voice and
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