| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: Buffalo.
The American will go to a bad place because he cannot speak
English, and is proud of it; but he knows how to make a home for
himself and his mate, knows how to keep the grass green in front
of his veranda, and how to fullest use the mechanism of life--hot
water, gas, good bell-ropes, telephones, etc. His shops sell him
delightful household fitments at very moderate rates, and he is
encompassed with all manner of labor-saving appliances. This
does not prevent his wife and his daughter working themselves to
death over household drudgery; but the intention is good.
When you have seen the outside of a few hundred thousand of these
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: factory chimney to darken the day with its smoke, no trolley-car to
split the silence with its shriek and smite the indignant ear with
the clanging of its impudent bell. No lumberman's axe has robbed
the encircling forests of their glory of great trees. No fires have
swept over the hills and left behind them the desolation of a
bristly landscape. All is fresh and sweet, calm and clear and
bright.
'Twas rather a rude jest of Nature, that tempest of yesterday. But
if you have taken it in good part, you are all the more ready for
her caressing mood to-day. And now you must be off to get your
dinner--not to order it at a shop, but to look for it in the woods
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: that makes one walk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self-
abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head,
the anguish that chooses sack-cloth for its raiment and into its
own drink puts gall:- all these were things of which I was afraid.
And as I had determined to know nothing of them, I was forced to
taste each of them in turn, to feed on them, to have for a season,
indeed, no other food at all.
I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I
did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does.
There was no pleasure I did not experience. I threw the pearl of
my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the
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