| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: we are all for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; and
not a man among us will go to the head of the march to sound the
heady drums.
It was agreeable upon the river. A barge or two went past laden
with hay. Reeds and willows bordered the stream; and cattle and
grey venerable horses came and hung their mild heads over the
embankment. Here and there was a pleasant village among trees,
with a noisy shipping-yard; here and there a villa in a lawn. The
wind served us well up the Scheldt and thereafter up the Rupel; and
we were running pretty free when we began to sight the brickyards
of Boom, lying for a long way on the right bank of the river. The
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: All your luminous delight
Shines before me in the night
When I grope for sleep and find
Only shadows in my mind.
Rose, when I remember you,
White and glowing, pink and new,
With so swift a sense of fun
Altho' life has just begun;
RIVERS TO THE SEA
With so sure a pride of place
In your very infant face,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: both announced their approaching departure, so that after all I
shall get my whitewashing done in peace, and the house will have
on its clean pinafore in time to welcome the spring.
Minora has painted my portrait, and is going to present it as a
parting gift to the Man of Wrath; and the fact that I let her do it,
and sat meekly times innumerable, proves conclusively, I hope,
that I am not vain. When Irais first saw it she laughed till she cried,
and at once commissioned her to paint hers, so that she may take it
away with her and give it to her husband on his birthday, which happens
to be early in February. Indeed, if it were not for this birthday,
I really think she would have forgotten to go at all; but birthdays are
 Elizabeth and her German Garden |