| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: distant from my mind; and while all the provincials were fluttered
about me by the unusual animation of their port, I passed
throughout their midst on my return homeward, quite absorbed in the
recollection of my visit and the Master's speech.
The same night there was brought to us from the ship a little
packet of pamphlets. The next day my lord was under engagement to
go with the Governor upon some party of pleasure; the time was
nearly due, and I left him for a moment alone in his room and
skimming through the pamphlets. When I returned, his head had
fallen upon the table, his arms lying abroad amongst the crumpled
papers.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: Palestine was their first point of attack: but the later Crusaders seem
to have found, like the rest of the world, that the destinies of
Palestine could not be separated from those of Egypt; and to Damietta,
accordingly, was directed that last disastrous attempt of St. Louis,
which all may read so graphically described in the pages of Joinville.
The Crusaders failed utterly of the object at which they aimed. They
succeeded in an object of which they never dreamed; for in those
Crusades the Moslem and the Christian had met face to face, and found
that both were men, that they had a common humanity, a common eternal
standard of nobleness and virtue. So the Christian knights went home
humbler and wiser men, when they found in the Saracen emirs the same
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: Or lain in ambush to betray my life,
Or were he not my dear friend, this desire
Might have excuse to work upon his wife;
As in revenge or quittal of such strife:
But as he is my kinsman, my dear friend,
The shame and fault finds no excuse nor end.
'Shameful it is;--ay, if the fact be known:
Hateful it is:-- there is no hate in loving;
I'll beg her love;--but she is not her own;
The worst is but denial and reproving:
My will is strong, past reason's weak removing.
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