| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: "No, I didn't lose it all. I on'y los' 'bout nine of
it. I sole de hide en taller for a dollar en ten cents."
"You had five dollars and ten cents left. Did you
speculate any more?"
"Yes. You know that one-laigged nigger dat
b'longs to old Misto Bradish? Well, he sot up a
bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo'
dollars mo' at de en' er de year. Well, all de niggers
went in, but dey didn't have much. I wuz de on'y
one dat had much. So I stuck out for mo' dan fo'
dollars, en I said 'f I didn' git it I'd start a bank my-
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare: One paine is lesned by anothers anguish:
Turne giddie, and be holpe by backward turning:
One desparate greefe, cures with anothers languish:
Take thou some new infection to the eye,
And the rank poyson of the old wil die
Rom. Your Plantan leafe is excellent for that
Ben. For what I pray thee?
Rom. For your broken shin
Ben. Why Romeo art thou mad?
Rom. Not mad, but bound more then a mad man is:
Shut vp in prison, kept without my foode,
Romeo and Juliet |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: little book of aphorisms had a brief but strong effect on me,
and Mitford's TALES OF OLD JAPAN, wherein I learned for the
first time the proper attitude of any rational man to his
country's laws - a secret found, and kept, in the Asiatic
islands. That I should commemorate all is more than I can
hope or the Editor could ask. It will be more to the point,
after having said so much upon improving books, to say a word
or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as
I have called it, is not very common, nor very generally
understood. It consists, first of all, in a vast
intellectual endowment - a free grace, I find I must call it
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