| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs
about; till at length he grew more dainty still and played with his
food, tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was
held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from his careless
grasp and fell to the ground, when he would look over at it with a
ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that it had
life, with a mind not made up whether to get it again, or a new one,
or be off; now thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was in
the wind. So the little impudent fellow would waste many an ear in
a forenoon; till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one,
considerably bigger than himself, and skilfully balancing it, he
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: likely that the strength of the labourer should be exhausted than
that materials should fail. I may mention, for example's sake,
that the terrible catastrophe of the Bride of Lammermoor actually
occurred in a Scottish family of rank. The female relative, by
whom the melancholy tale was communicated to me many years since,
was a near connection of the family in which the event happened,
and always told it with an appearance of melancholy mystery which
enhanced the interest. She had known in her youth the brother
who rode before the unhappy victim to the fatal altar, who,
though then a mere boy, and occupied almost entirely with the
gaiety of his own appearance in the bridal procession, could not
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: more devotion, than our saint. Before his day, even you will
confess, they had effected little. It was his part, by one
striking act of martyrdom, to direct all men's eyes on that
distressful country. At a blow, and with the price of his life, he
made the place illustrious and public. And that, if you will
consider largely, was the one reform needful; pregnant of all that
should succeed. It brought money; it brought (best individual
addition of them all) the sisters; it brought supervision, for
public opinion and public interest landed with the man at Kalawao.
If ever any man brought reforms, and died to bring them, it was he.
There is not a clean cup or towel in the Bishop-Home, but dirty
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