| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: half regretted my impulse; then I shut my teeth and went on.
I have never been a nervous woman, as I said before. Moreover, a
minute or two in the darkness enabled me to see things fairly
well. Beulah gave me rather a start by rubbing unexpectedly
against my feet; then we two, side by side, went down the drive.
There were no fragments of china, but where the grove began I
picked up a silver spoon. So far Rosie's story was borne out: I
began to wonder if it were not indiscreet, to say the least, this
midnight prowling in a neighborhood with such a deservedly bad
reputation. Then I saw something gleaming, which proved to be
the handle of a cup, and a step or two farther on I found a V-
The Circular Staircase |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be
regarded as a member of any society which I have not joined."
This I gave to the town clerk; and he has it. The State,
having thus learned that I did not wish to be regarded
as a member of that church, has never made a like
demand on me since; though it said that it must adhere to
its original presumption that time. If I had known how to
name them, I should then have signed off in detail from all
the societies which I never signed on to; but I did not know
where to find such a complete list.
I have paid no poll tax for six years. I was put into
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: Syrian Catholics, the Mussulmans had swept away also that doctrine which
alone can deliver men from idolatry and fetish worships--if not outward
and material ones, yet the still more subtle, and therefore more
dangerous idolatries of the intellect. For they had swept away the
belief in the Logos; in a divine teacher of every human soul, who was,
in some mysterious way, the pattern and antitype of human virtue and
wisdom. And more, they had swept away that belief in the incarnation of
the Logos, which alone can make man feel that his divine teacher is one
who can enter into the human duties, sorrows, doubts, of each human
spirit. And, therefore, when Mohammed and his personal friends were
dead, the belief in a present divine teacher, on the whole, died with
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