| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: which has been ascrib'd to me, but was originally his), for the reception
and cure of poor sick persons, whether inhabitants of the province
or strangers. He was zealous and active in endeavouring to procure
subscriptions for it, but the proposal being a novelty in America,
and at first not well understood, he met with but small success.
At length he came to me with the compliment that he found there
was no such thing as carrying a public-spirited project through
without my being concern'd in it. "For," says he, "I am often
ask'd by those to whom I propose subscribing, Have you consulted
Franklin upon this business? And what does he think of it?
And when I tell them that I have not (supposing it rather out of your
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: cough or chough (so the country people call them). They are the
same kind which are found in Switzerland among the Alps, and which
Pliny pretended were peculiar to those mountains, and calls the
PYRRHOCORAX. The body is black; the legs, feet, and bill of a deep
yellow, almost to a red. I could not find that it was affected for
any good quality it had, nor is the flesh good to eat, for it feeds
much on fish and carrion; it is counted little better than a kite,
for it is of ravenous quality, and is very mischievous. It will
steal and carry away anything it finds about the house that is not
too heavy, though not fit for its food--as knives, forks, spoons,
and linen cloths, or whatever it can fly away with; sometimes they
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: realised, and the touch of our dead loves remain with us and guide us
to the end. And yet there was more significance, perhaps, and
perhaps a greater consolation, in this little nosegay on the grave of
one who had died old. We are apt to make so much of the tragedy of
death, and think so little of the enduring tragedy of some men's
lives, that we see more to lament for in a life cut off in the midst
of usefulness and love, than in one that miserably survives all love
and usefulness, and goes about the world the phantom of itself,
without hope, or joy, or any consolation. These flowers seemed not
so much the token of love that survived death, as of something yet
more beautiful - of love that had lived a man's life out to an end
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