| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: very strange, it did not for a moment disturb his serenity or his
kindly judgment. He answered in a few quiet sentences that showed
no trace of passion or even of excitement; and on the central
suggestion that some one person must direct the affairs of the
government, replied with dignity "if this must be done, I must do
it," adding that on affairs of importance he desired and supposed
he had a right to have the advice of all the members of his
cabinet. This reply ended the matter, and as far as is known,
neither of them ever mentioned the subject again. Mr. Lincoln put
the papers away in an envelope, and no word of the affair came to
the public until years after both men were dead. In one mind at
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: and only my love for Dejah Thoris and the hope which still
clung to me that I might again see her kept me from rising to
face the goddess of the First Born and go down to my
death like a gentleman, facing my foes and with their blood
mingling with mine.
After we had crawled in this disgusting fashion for a matter
of a couple of hundred feet we were halted by our escort.
"Let them rise," said a voice behind us; a thin, wavering
voice, yet one that had evidently been accustomed to command
for many years.
"Rise," said our escort, "but do not face toward Issus."
The Gods of Mars |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: his entelechies and energies, and the rest of the notions which he has
made for himself out of his own brain, and then pack each thing away in
its proper niche in his great cloud-universe of conceptions? Is it that
God hides things from such men many a time, and reveals them to babes,
to gentle, affectionate, simple-hearted men, such as we know Archimedes
to have been, who do not try to give an explanation for a fact, but feel
how awful and divine it is, and wrestle reverently and stedfastly with
it, as Jacob with the Angel, and will not let it go, until it bless
them? Sure I am, from what I have seen of scientific men, that there is
an intimate connection between the health of the moral faculties and the
health of the inductive ones; and that the proud, self-conceited, and
|
