| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: R. L. S.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH, [DECEMBER 1884].
DEAR LAD, - I have made up my mind about the P. M. G., and send you
a copy, which please keep or return. As for not giving a
reduction, what are we? Are we artists or city men? Why do we
sneer at stock-brokers? O nary; I will not take the 40 pounds. I
took that as a fair price for my best work; I was not able to
produce my best; and I will be damned if I steal with my eyes open.
SUFFICIT. This is my lookout. As for the paper being rich,
certainly it is; but I am honourable. It is no more above me in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: through him, and to comprehend resentments and dangerous sudden
antagonisms I should have found incomprehensible in their more
complex forms, if I had not first seen them in him in their feral
state.
With his soft felt hat at the back of his head, his rather heavy,
rather mottled face, his rationally thick boots and slouching tweed-
clad form, a little round-shouldered and very obstinate looking, he
strolls through all my speculations sucking his teeth audibly, and
occasionally throwing out a shrewd aphorism, the intractable
unavoidable ore of the new civilisation.
Essentially he was simple. Generally speaking, he hated and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: splendid flame, and then burn on with an enduring heat far into the
night, a young white birch with the bark on is the tree to choose.
Six or eight round sticks of this laid across the hand-chunks, with
perhaps a few quarterings of a larger tree, will make a glorious
fire.
But before you put these on, you must be ready to light up. A few
splinters of dry spruce or pine or balsam, stood endwise against the
backlog, or, better still, piled up in a pyramid between the hand-
chunks; a few strips of birch-bark; and one good match,--these are
all that you want. But be sure that your match is a good one. It
is better to see to this before you go into the brush. Your
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