| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: But they float away -- for who can hold
Youth, or perfume or the moon's gold?
"Only in Sleep"
Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten --
What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: of the size and importance of English opposition to the policy of George
III; in group five nothing is said about this at all. The boys and girls
who studied books in group five would grow up believing that England was
undividedly autocratic, tyrannical, and hostile to our liberty. In his
careful and conscientious classification, Mr. Altschul gives us the books
in use twenty years ago (and hence responsible for the opinion of
Americans now between thirty and forty years old) and books in use
to-day, and hence responsible for the opinion of those American men and
women who will presently be grown up and will prolong for another
generation the school-taught ignorance and prejudice of their fathers and
mothers. I select from Mr. Altschul's catalogue only those books in use
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: be observed that I was very seldom idle, but having regularly
divided my time according to the several daily employments that
were before me, such as: first, my duty to God, and the reading the
Scriptures, which I constantly set apart some time for thrice every
day; secondly, the going abroad with my gun for food, which
generally took me up three hours in every morning, when it did not
rain; thirdly, the ordering, cutting, preserving, and cooking what
I had killed or caught for my supply; these took up great part of
the day. Also, it is to be considered, that in the middle of the
day, when the sun was in the zenith, the violence of the heat was
too great to stir out; so that about four hours in the evening was
 Robinson Crusoe |