| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: potatoes. And for half the year all the cattle must be housed and
fed to keep them alive. This lends a melancholy aspect to
agriculture. Most of the farmers look as if they had never seen
better days. With few exceptions they are what a New Englander
would call "slack-twisted and shiftless." Their barns are pervious
to the weather, and their fences fail to connect. Sleds and
ploughs rust together beside the house, and chickens scratch up the
front-door yard. In truth, the people have been somewhat
demoralised by the conflicting claims of different occupations;
hunting in the fall, lumbering in the winter and spring, and
working for the American sportsmen in the brief angling season, are
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: folly, and ignorance of Christian life and faith, when a man
seeks, without faith, to be justified and saved by works.
To make what we have said more easily understood, let us set it
forth under a figure. The works of a Christian man, who is
justified and saved by his faith out of the pure and unbought
mercy of God, ought to be regarded in the same light as would
have been those of Adam and Eve in paradise and of all their
posterity if they had not sinned. Of them it is said, "The Lord
God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it
and to keep it" (Gen. ii. 15). Now Adam had been created by God
just and righteous, so that he could not have needed to be
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: the one away up in the niche, far above the golden dome where the
Host was. Titiche, the busybody of the house, noticed that Miss
Sophie's bundle was larger than usual that afternoon. "Ah, poor
woman!" sighed Titiche's mother, "she would be rich for
Christmas."
The bundle grew larger each day, and Miss Sophie grew smaller.
The damp, cold rain and mist closed the white-curtained window,
but always there behind the sewing-machine drooped and bobbed the
little black-robed figure. Whirr, whirr went the wheels, and the
coarse jeans pants piled in great heaps at her side. The
Claiborne Street car saw her oftener than before, and the sweet
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
