| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: purao, had a tattered Virgil in his pocket.
Certainly, if money,could have been raised upon the book,
Robert Herrick would long ago have sacrificed that last
possession; but the demand for literature, which is so marked a
feature in some parts of the South Seas, extends not so far as
the dead tongues; and the Virgil, which he could not exchange
against a meal, had often consoled him in his hunger. He would
study it, as he lay with tightened belt on the floor of the old
calaboose, seeking favourite passages and finding new ones only
less beautiful because they lacked the coinsecration of
remembrance. Or he would pause on random country walks; sit on
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: you'll escape him, Monsieur le baron. Send away Birotteau, madame, and
you will set things right with Mademoiselle Gamard. Ask the Abbe
Troubert, when you meet him at the archbishop's, if he can play whist.
He will say yes. Then invite him to your salon, where he wants to be
received; he'll be sure to come. You are a woman, and you can
certainly win a priest to your interests. When the baron is promoted,
his uncle peer of France, and Troubert a bishop, you can make
Birotteau a canon if you choose. Meantime yield,--but yield
gracefully, all the while with a slight menace. Your family can give
Troubert quite as much support as he can give you. You'll understand
each other perfectly on that score. As for you, sailor, carry your
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: good conduct; with the constant sight of which from their youth up, the
people would hardly fail to be gradually formed and advanced in virtue.
And this was the reason why he forbade them to travel abroad, and go
about acquainting themselves with foreign rules of morality, the habits
of ill-educated people, and different views of government. Withal he
banished from Lacedaemon all strangers who could not give a very good
reason for their coming thither; not because he was afraid lest they
should inform themselves of and imitate his manner of government (as
Thucydides says), or learn any thing to their good; but rather lest they
should introduce something contrary to good manners. With strange
people, strange words must be admitted; these novelties produce
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