| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: years later to his twin boys; and what was of still more solid worth
to him, Cardinal Tournon took him to Antwerp, Bordeaux, Bayonne, and
more than once to Rome; and in these Italian journeys of his he
collected many facts for the great work of his life, that "History
of Fishes" which he dedicated, naturally enough, to the cardinal.
This book with its plates is, for the time, a masterpiece of
accuracy. Those who are best acquainted with the subject say, that
it is up to the present day a key to the whole ichthyology of the
Mediterranean. Two other men, Belon and Salviani, were then at work
on the same subject, and published their books almost at the same
time; a circumstance which caused, as was natural, a three-cornered
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems,
and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to
myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher,
had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had
elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately
reached me in a distant part of the country--a letter from him--
which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other
than a personal reply. The MS gave evidence of nervous
agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness--of a mental
disorder which oppressed him--and of an earnest desire to see me,
The Fall of the House of Usher |
