| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: "Let us follow him then, and raise the country, and mak mair help
as we ride, and then have at the Cumberland reivers! Take, burn,
and slay--they that lie nearest us shall smart first."
"Whisht! haud your tongues, daft callants," said an old man, "ye
dinna ken what ye speak about. What! wad ye raise war atween two
pacificated countries?"
"And what signifies deaving us wi' tales about our fathers,"
retorted the young; man, "if we're to sit and see our friends'
houses burnt ower their heads, and no put out hand to revenge
them? Our fathers did not do that, I trow?"
"I am no saying onything against revenging Hobbie's wrang, puir
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: Monument; the lions in the Tower; and the wooden giants in
Guildhall. They still believe in dreams and fortune-telling, and
an old woman that lives in Bull-and-Mouth Street makes a
tolerable subsistence by detecting stolen goods, and promising
the girls good husbands. They are apt to be rendered
uncomfortable by comets and eclipses; and if a dog howls
dolefully at night, it is looked upon as a sure sign of a death
in
the place. There are even many ghost stories current,
particularly concerning the old mansion-houses; in several of
which it is said strange sights are sometimes seen. Lords and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: handsome, now?" he said. Every penny he makes goes into that
ranche to make it handsomer. Then the climate, with the sea-
breeze every afternoon in the hottest summer weather, had
gradually cured the sciatica; and his sister and niece were
now domesticated with him for company - or, rather, the niece
came only once in the two days, teaching music the meanwhile
in the valley. And then, for a last piece of luck, "the
handsomest spot in the Californy mountains" had produced a
petrified forest, which Mr. Evans now shows at the modest
figure of half a dollar a head, or two-thirds of his capital
when he first came there with an axe and a sciatica.
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