| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: helmet, giving grace to that whose chief expression
was terror. At the bottom of the rock, and leaning,
as it were, against it, was constructed a rude
hut, built chiefly of the trunks of trees felled in the
neighbouring forest, and secured against the weather
by having its crevices stuffed with moss mingled
with clay. The stem of a young fir-tree lopped
of its branches, with a piece of wood tied across
near the top, was planted upright by the door, as
a rude emblem of the holy cross. At a little distance
on the right hand, a fountain of the purest
Ivanhoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: spawn, and to become Samlets early in the spring next following.
The Salmons having spent their appointed time, and done this natural
duty in the fresh waters, they then haste to the sea before winter, both
the melter and spawner; but if they be stops by flood-gates or weirs, or
lost in the fresh waters, then those so left behind by degrees grow sick
and lean, and unseasonable, and kipper, that is to say, have bony
gristles grow out of their lower chaps, not unlike a hawk's beak, which
hinders their feeding; and, in time, such fish so left behind pine away
and die. 'Tis observed, that he may live thus one year from the sea; but
he then grows insipid and tasteless, and loses both his blood and
strength, and pines and dies the second year. And 'tis noted, that those
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: perfect in its kind, in literature, is imperishable: nobody can
imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow;
it is perfect, it must and will stand alone: its immortality
is secure.
It is one of the smallest books in the world, but few big books have
received such wide attention, and been so much pondered by the grave
and learned, and so much discussed and written about by the thoughtful,
the thoughtless, the wise, and the foolish. Long notices of it
have appeared, from time to time, in the great English reviews,
and in erudite and authoritative philological periodicals; and it
has been laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly
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