| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: day a matter of admiration; and I find my grandfather in his
diary depicting the nature of their excellence in one happily
descriptive phrase, when he remarks that Captain Soutar had
landed `the small stores and nine casks of oil WITH ALL THE
ACTIVITY OF A SMUGGLER.' And it was one thing to land,
another to get on board again. I have here a passage from the
diary, where it seems to have been touch-and-go. `I landed at
Tarbetness, on the eastern side of the point, in a MERE GALE
OR BLAST OF WIND from west-south-west, at 2 p.m. It blew so
fresh that the captain, in a kind of despair, went off to the
ship, leaving myself and the steward ashore. While I was in
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: I determined to take up my abode with freedom. I, therefore, with
my usual impetuosity, sold my commission, and travelled into the
interior parts of the country, to lay out my money to advantage.
Added to this, I did not much like the puritanical manners of the
large towns. Inequality of condition was there most disgustingly
galling. The only pleasure wealth afforded, was to make an
ostentatious display of it; for the cultivation of the fine arts,
or literature, had not introduced into the first circles that polish
of manners which renders the rich so essentially superior to the
poor in Europe. Added to this, an influx of vices had been let in
by the Revolution, and the most rigid principles of religion shaken
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: the confusion of that impious Court will be advantageous to you
and to your welfare, and to many others with you. Those who do
harm to her are doing your office; those who in every way abhor
her are glorifying Christ; in short, those are Christians who are
not Romans.
But, to say yet more, even this never entered my heart: to
inveigh against the Court of Rome or to dispute at all about her.
For, seeing all remedies for her health to be desperate, I looked
on her with contempt, and, giving her a bill of divorcement, said
to her, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that
is filthy, let him be filthy still," giving myself up to the
|
