| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: measureless derision; he said they were back-alley barbers
disguised as nobilities, peanut peddlers masquerading as
gentlemen, organ-grinders bereft of their brother monkey.
At last he stopped and stood still. He waited until the place had
become absolutely silent and expectant, then he delivered his
deadliest shot; delivered it with ice-cold seriousness and
deliberation, with a significant emphasis upon the closing words:
he said he believed that the reward offered for the lost knife
was humbug and bunkum, and that its owner would know where to
find it whenever he should have occasion TO ASSASSINATE SOMEBODY.
Then he stepped from the stand, leaving a startled and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: by contact; we drink them up like water, and are bettered,
yet know not how. It is in books more specifically didactic
that we can follow out the effect, and distinguish and weigh
and compare. A book which has been very influential upon me
fell early into my hands, and so may stand first, though I
think its influence was only sensible later on, and perhaps
still keeps growing, for it is a book not easily outlived:
the ESSAIS of Montaigne. That temperate and genial picture
of life is a great gift to place in the hands of persons of
to-day; they will find in these smiling pages a magazine of
heroism and wisdom, all of an antique strain; they will have
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: years ago. One of the combatants was the city of Athens, the other was the
great island of Atlantis. Critias proposes to speak of these rival powers
first of all, giving to Athens the precedence; the various tribes of Greeks
and barbarians who took part in the war will be dealt with as they
successively appear on the scene.
In the beginning the gods agreed to divide the earth by lot in a friendly
manner, and when they had made the allotment they settled their several
countries, and were the shepherds or rather the pilots of mankind, whom
they guided by persuasion, and not by force. Hephaestus and Athena,
brother and sister deities, in mind and art united, obtained as their lot
the land of Attica, a land suited to the growth of virtue and wisdom; and
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