| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: exasperating rivalry. The one returned from the dead of exile to
find himself replaced and excelled. The other, at the end of a
long, anxious, and successful struggle, beheld his only possible
competitor resuscitated from the grave. The qualities of both, in
this difficult moment, shone out nobly. I feel I seem always less
than partial to the lovable Laupepa; his virtues are perhaps not
those which chiefly please me, and are certainly not royal; but he
found on his return an opportunity to display the admirable
sweetness of his nature. The two entered into a competition of
generosity, for which I can recall no parallel in history, each
waiving the throne for himself, each pressing it upon his rival;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: Eight Frenchmen, even eight Englishmen from another rank of society,
would have dared to make some fun for themselves and the spectators;
but the working man, when sober, takes an extreme and even melancholy
view of personal deportment. A fifth-form schoolboy is not more
careful of dignity. He dares not be comical; his fun must escape
from him unprepared, and above all, it must be unaccompanied by any
physical demonstration. I like his society under most circumstances,
but let me never again join with him in public gambols.
But the impulse to sing was strong, and triumphed over modesty and
even the inclemencies of sea and sky. On this rough Saturday night,
we got together by the main deck-house, in a place sheltered from the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: their attention, if they are not willing to lend it; nor, on the
other side, to interrupt him who is in possession, because that is
in the grossest manner to give the preference to our own good
sense.
There are some people whose good manners will not suffer them to
interrupt you; but, what is almost as bad, will discover abundance
of impatience, and lie upon the watch until you have done, because
they have started something in their own thoughts which they long
to be delivered of. Meantime, they are so far from regarding what
passes, that their imaginations are wholly turned upon what they
have in reserve, for fear it should slip out of their memory; and
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