| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: consideration. A second reading showed him that his first
impression was correct. Thereupon the frontier lawyer, taking his
pen, went carefully over the whole dispatch, and by his
corrections so changed the work of the trained and experienced
statesman as entirely to remove its offensive tone, without in
the least altering its force or courage.
Once again during 1861 the country was in serious danger of war
with England, and the action of President Lincoln at this time
proved not only that he had the will to be just, even when his
own people were against him, but had the skill to gain real
advantage from what seemed very like defeat. One of the earliest
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: Sundays to make room for a successor, and being manifestly
perfectly clean, we came to an agreement that it should only
be changed <75> on the first and third Sundays in the month,
on condition that I promised to turn it on the other Sundays.
My governess said that the outer folds became soiled
from the mere contact with the other things in my pocket,
and that visitors might catch sight of the soiled side if it
was never turned when I wished to blow my nose in their presence,
and that one had no right to give one's visitors shocks.
"But I never do wish-- --" I began with great earnestness.
"Unsinn," said my governess, cutting me short.
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: They were more brutal, without refinement, without ornament; but
they were short, and generally followed by periods of irritation
without cause, irritation fed by the most trivial pretexts. We
had spats about the coffee, the table-cloth, the carriage, games
of cards,--trifles, in short, which could not be of the least
importance to either of us. As for me, a terrible execration was
continually boiling up within me. I watched her pour the tea,
swing her foot, lift her spoon to her mouth, and blow upon hot
liquids or sip them, and I detested her as if these had been so
many crimes.
"I did not notice that these periods of irritation depended very
The Kreutzer Sonata |
