| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: singing of hymns. The omission of this sacred duty would indicate,
not only a lack of religious training in the house chief, but a
shameless disregard of all that is reputable in Samoan social life.
No doubt, to many, the evening service is no more than a duty
fulfilled. The child who says his prayer at his mother's knee can
have no real conception of the meaning of the words he lisps so
readily, yet he goes to his little bed with a sense of heavenly
protection that he would miss were the prayer forgotten. The
average Samoan is but a larger child in most things, and would lay
an uneasy head on his wooden pillow if he had not joined, even
perfunctorily, in the evening service. With my husband, prayer,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: from her reverie. If he was tired, his care for her kept him from
complaining.
"Poor, dear, little sensitive!" cried the countess as he fell asleep
tired with some play which had driven the sad memories from her mind,
"how can you live in this world? who will understand you? who will
love you? who will see the treasures hidden in that frail body? No
one! Like me, you are alone on earth."
She sighed and wept. The graceful pose of her child lying on her knees
made her smile sadly. She looked at him long, tasting one of those
pleasures which are a secret between mothers and God. Etienne's
weakness was so great that until he was a year and a half old she had
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: among which were rhymes similar to those we had
found in Peking. Still later I received other versions of these
same rhymes from my little friend, Miss Chalfant, collected
in a different part of Shantung from that occupied by Dr.
Smith. I then had no fewer than five versions of
"This little pig went to market,"
each having some local coloring not found in the other,
proving that the fingers and toes furnish children with the
same entertainment in the Orient as in the Occident, and
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