| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "I agree with you," said the Woozy, wagging his square head.
"We should have taken the shepherd's advice," added Hank the Mule.
The others of the party, however they might be puzzled by the serious
problem that confronted them, would not allow themselves to despair.
"If we once get over these mountains," said Button-Bright, "we could
probably get along all right."
"True enough," agreed Dorothy. "So we must find some way, of course,
to get past these whirligig hills. But how?"
"I wish the Ork was with us," sighed Trot.
"But the Ork isn't here," said the Wizard, "and we must depend upon
ourselves to conquer this difficulty. Unfortunately, all my magic has
 The Lost Princess of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our
shop-keepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only
our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon
us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever
yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though
often and earnestly invited to it.
Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like
expedients, 'till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that
there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them
into practice.
But, as to my self, having been wearied out for many years with
 A Modest Proposal |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: visions of knights and castles passed before me. They were
the voices of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I
was an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was
done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village inn--a
wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer view
of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I never had
seen its institutions before. This is one of its peculiar
institutions; for it is a shire town. I began to comprehend
what its inhabitants were about.
In the morning, our breakfasts were put through the hole
in the door, in small oblong-square tin pans, made to fit,
 On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |