| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: all differently. St. John had left the others and was walking slowly
down to the river, absorbed in his own thoughts, which were bitter
and unhappy, for he felt himself alone; and Helen, standing by herself
in the sunny space among the native women, was exposed to presentiments
of disaster. The cries of the senseless beasts rang in her ears
high and low in the air, as they ran from tree-trunk to tree-top.
How small the little figures looked wandering through the trees!
She became acutely conscious of the little limbs, the thin veins,
the delicate flesh of men and women, which breaks so easily and lets
the life escape compared with these great trees and deep waters.
A falling branch, a foot that slips, and the earth has crushed them
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest: Yes, brag about those days of old, boast of them as you will,
I sing the modern methods that have robbed them of their chill;
I sing the cheery steam pipe and the upstairs snug and warm
And a spine that's free from shivers as I robe my manly form.
The Man to Be
Some day the world will need a man of courage in a time of doubt,
And somewhere, as a little boy, that future hero plays about.
Within some humble home, no doubt, that instrument of greater things
Now climbs upon his father's knee or to his mother's garments clings.
And when shall come that call for him to render service that is fine,
He that shall do God's mission here may be your little boy or mine.
Just Folks |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: have a settled environment, a life history, that spin in a cage of
instincts. But man is a beast of that kind no longer, he has left
his habitat, he goes out to limitless living. . . ."
This idea of man going out into new things, leaving securities,
habits, customs, leaving his normal life altogether behind him,
underlay all Benham's aristocratic conceptions. And it was natural
that he should consider fear as entirely inconvenient, treat it
indeed with ingratitude, and dwell upon the immense liberations that
lie beyond for those who will force themselves through its
remonstrances. . . .
Benham confessed his liability to fear quite freely in these notes.
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