| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: 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
before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . .
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . .
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . .
and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . .
shall not perish from this earth.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: And the stranger said: "Take a message to one man. Find him, whether he
sleep or wake, whether he eat or drink; and say to him: 'Where are the
souls of the men that you have bought?'
"And if he shall answer you and say: 'I bought no men's souls! The souls
that I bought were the souls of dogs?' Then ask him this question, say to
him, 'Where are the--'
"And if he cry out, 'You lie, you lie! I know what you are going to say.
What do I know of envoys? Was I ever afraid of the British Government? It
is all a lie!' Then question him no further. But say: 'There was a
rushlight once. It flickered and flared, and it guttered down, and went
out--and no man heeded it: it was only a rushlight.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: When you came in I was thinking that Fanny Malvaut would make a nice
little wife; I was thinking of the contrast between her pure, lonely
life and the life of the Countess--she has sunk as low as a bill of
exchange already, she will sink to the lowest depths of degradation
before she has done!'--I scrutinized him during the deep silence that
followed, but in a moment he spoke again. 'Well,' he said, 'do you
think that it is nothing to have this power of insight into the
deepest recesses of the human heart, to embrace so many lives, to see
the naked truth underlying it all? There are no two dramas alike:
there are hideous sores, deadly chagrins, love scenes, misery that
soon will lie under the ripples of the Seine, young men's joys that
Gobseck |
