| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: gave forth one of those purrings by which cats express their pleasure;
but this murmur issued from a throat so powerful and so deep that it
resounded through the cave like the last vibrations of an organ in a
church. The man, understanding the importance of his caresses,
redoubled them in such a way as to surprise and stupefy his imperious
courtesan. When he felt sure of having extinguished the ferocity of
his capricious companion, whose hunger had so fortunately been
satisfied the day before, he got up to go out of the cave; the panther
let him go out, but when he had reached the summit of the hill she
sprang with the lightness of a sparrow hopping from twig to twig, and
rubbed herself against his legs, putting up her back after the manner
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Mary Anne hesitated.
"Yes'm," she said at last. "I thought I locked them all, but
there was one open this morning."
I went out of the room and down the hall, followed by Mary Anne.
The door into the clothes chute was securely bolted, and when I
opened it I saw the evidence of the woman's story. A pruning-
ladder had been brought from where it had lain against the
stable and now stood upright in the clothes shaft, its end
resting against the wall between the first and second floors.
I turned to Mary.
"This is due to your carelessness," I said. "If we had all been
The Circular Staircase |
