| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: good people of Little Britain sleep in peace. Temple Bar is an
effectual barrier against all interior foes; and as to foreign
invasion, the Lord Mayor has but to throw himself into the
Tower, call in the trainbands, and put the standing army of
Beef-eaters under arms, and he may bid defiance to the world!
Thus wrapped up in its own concerns, its own habits, and its
own opinions, Little Britain has long flourished as a sound
heart to this great fungous metropolis. I have pleased myself
with considering it as a chosen spot, where the principles of
sturdy John Bullism were garnered up, like seed corn, to renew
the national character, when it had run to waste and
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: of all the agricultural science available is in the hands of the
elders, and there you have a first-class engine for pioneer work.
The tawdry mysticism and the borrowing from Freemasonry serve the
low caste Swede and Dane, the Welshman and the Cornish cotter,
just as well as a highly organized heaven.
Then I went about the streets and peeped into people's front
windows, and the decorations upon the tables were after the
manner of the year 1850. Main Street was full of country folk
from the desert, come in to trade with the Zion Mercantile
Co-operative Institute. The Church, I fancy, looks after the
finances of this thing, and it consequently pays good dividends.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: where Tamasese.
It is the official Samoan pretension that the Germans fired first
at Fangalii. In view of all German and some native testimony, the
text of Fritze's orders, and the probabilities of the case, no
honest mind will believe it for a moment. Certainly the Samoans
fired first. As certainly they were betrayed into the engagement
in the agitation of the moment, and it was not till afterwards that
they understood what they had done. Then, indeed, all Samoa drew a
breath of wonder and delight. The invincible had fallen; the men
of the vaunted war-ships had been met in the field by the braves of
Mataafa: a superstition was no more. Conceive this people
|