| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
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.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: mention these particulars, applicable solely to the province in
which our scene lies; because, unquestionably, the Jacobite
party, in the other parts of the kingdom, consisted of much more
formidable, as well as much more respectable, materials.
One long table extended itself down the ample hall of Ellieslaw
Castle, which was still left much in the state in which it had
been one hundred years before, stretching, that is, in gloomy
length, along the whole side of the castle, vaulted with ribbed
arches of freestone, the groins of which sprung from projecting
figures, that, carved into all the wild forms which the fantastic
imagination of a Gothic architect could devise, grinned, frowned,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: of "the world" being to treat of a young widow's second marriage
as certain and probably near, and to smile with meaning if the widow
acts accordingly. But if Dorothea did choose to espouse her solitude,
he felt that the resolution would well become her.
CHAPTER LVI.
"How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armor is his honest thought,
And simple truth his only skill!
. . . . . . .
This man is freed from servile bands
Middlemarch |
