| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: Mary. And so the river bore me on, past the alien face of
antique civilizations and the familiar wonders of Greece, till I
swam upon the fiercely rushing tide of the Middle Ages, with its
swirling eddies of passion, its heaven-reflecting pools of poetry
and art; I heard the rhythmic blow of the craftsmen's hammers in
the goldsmiths' workshops and on the walls of churches, the
party-cries of armed factions in the narrow streets, the organ-
roll of Dante's verse, the crackle of the fagots around Arnold of
Brescia, the twitter of the swallows to which St. Francis
preached, the laughter of the ladies listening on the hillside to
the quips of the Decameron, while plague-struck Florence howled
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: commemorate. For government is the nurture of man, and the government of
good men is good, and of bad men bad. And I must show that our ancestors
were trained under a good government, and for this reason they were good,
and our contemporaries are also good, among whom our departed friends are
to be reckoned. Then as now, and indeed always, from that time to this,
speaking generally, our government was an aristocracy--a form of government
which receives various names, according to the fancies of men, and is
sometimes called democracy, but is really an aristocracy or government of
the best which has the approval of the many. For kings we have always had,
first hereditary and then elected, and authority is mostly in the hands of
the people, who dispense offices and power to those who appear to be most
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: respectability - and incidentally that of our retainers - became
assured, and the influence of Tusitala increased tenfold.
After all work and meals were finished, the 'pu,' or war conch, was
sounded from the back veranda and the front, so that it might be
heard by all. I don't think it ever occurred to us that there was
any incongruity in the use of the war conch for the peaceful
invitation to prayer. In response to its summons the white members
of the family took their usual places in one end of the large hall,
while the Samoans - men, women, and children - trooped in through
all the open doors, some carrying lanterns if the evening were
dark, all moving quietly and dropping with Samoan decorum in a wide
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