| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: or rather to be less frequently visited with the fits of
derangement of which this was a symptom. No argument could
prevail upon him to accept anything beyond the simplest
necessaries, although much more was offered by Earnscliff out of
charity, and by his more superstitious neighbours from other
motives. The benefits of these last he repaid by advice, when
consulted (as at length he slowly was) on their diseases, or
those of their cattle. He often furnished them with medicines
also, and seemed possessed, not only of such as were the produce
of the country, but of foreign drugs. He gave these persons to
understand, that his name was Elshender the Recluse; but his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: thing then for him to do was to take this order to Jung Lu. Yuan
was in favour of reform, though he may not have approved of the
Emperor's methods. Jung Lu hastened to Prince Ching and they two
sped to the Empress Dowager in the Summer Palace where they laid
the whole matter before her. She hurried to Peking, boldly faced
and denounced the Emperor, took from him his seal of state, and
confined him a prisoner in the Winter Palace. Kang Yu-wei, the
young "Confucius," fled, but the Empress Dowager seized his
brother and five other patriotic young reformers, and ordered
them beheaded on the public execution grounds in Peking.
Naturally the Empress Dowager approved of the "wise and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: same for inaction as action,--if not better,--to keep him in temper.
--Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, quoth my uncle Toby, in
the simplicity of his heart,--but Modesty.--My sister, I dare say, added
he, does not care to let a man come so near her. . .. I will not say
whether my uncle Toby had completed the sentence or not;--'tis for his
advantage to suppose he had,--as, I think, he could have added no One Word
which would have improved it.
If, on the contrary, my uncle Toby had not fully arrived at the period's
end--then the world stands indebted to the sudden snapping of my father's
tobacco-pipe for one of the neatest examples of that ornamental figure in
oratory, which Rhetoricians stile the Aposiopesis.--Just Heaven! how does
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