| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: bliss; and I must earnestly hope that you may be enabled to
take such a view of this affliction as to live in the happy
prospect of our all meeting again to part no more - and that
under such considerations you are getting up your spirits. I
wish you would walk about, and by all means go to town, and do
not sit much at home.'
`INVERNESS, JULY 23RD.
`I am duly favoured with your much-valued letter, and I
am happy to find that you are so much with my mother, because
that sort of variety has a tendency to occupy the mind, and to
keep it from brooding too much upon one subject. Sensibility
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: Ocean; and away to the west, over all the carse of
Stirling, you can see the first snows upon Ben Ledi.
But Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one
of the vilest climates under heaven. She is liable to be
beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched
with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out of the east,
and powdered with the snow as it comes flying southward
from the Highland hills. The weather is raw and
boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and
a downright meteorological purgatory in the spring. The
delicate die early, and I, as a survivor, among bleak
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: angling is much more ancient than the incarnation of our Saviour; for in
the Prophet Amos mention is made of fish-hooks; and in the book of
Job, which was long before the days of Amos, for that book is said to
have been written by Moses, mention is made also of fish-hooks, which
must imply anglers in those times.
But, my worthy friend, as I would rather prove myself a gentleman, by
being learned and humble, valiant and inoffensive, virtuous and
communicable, than by any fond ostentation of riches, or, wanting
those virtues myself, boast that these were in my ancestors; and yet I
grant, that where a noble and ancient descent and such merit meet in
any man, it is a double dignification of that person; so if this antiquity
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