| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: me, when I ask, What is become of the freedom of an Englishman?
And where is the liberty and property that my old glorious friend
came over to assert? We have drove popery out of the nation, and
sent slavery to foreign climes. The arts only remain in bondage,
when a man of science and character shall be openly insulted in
the midst of the many useful services he is daily paying to the
publick. Was it ever heard, even in Turkey or Algiers, that a
state-astrologer was banter'd out of his life by an ignorant
impostor, or bawl'd out of the world by a pack of villanous,
deep-mouth'd hawkers? Though I print almanacks, and publish
advertisements; though I produce certificates under the ministers
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Than be alive to-night.
I KNOW NOT HOW, BUT AS I COUNT
I KNOW not how, but as I count
The beads of former years,
Old laughter catches in my throat
With the very feel of tears.
SPRING SONG
THE air was full of sun and birds,
The fresh air sparkled clearly.
Remembrance wakened in my heart
And I knew I loved her dearly.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: then she turned to Winterbourne. There was a little pink flush in
her cheek; she was tremendously pretty. "Does Mr. Winterbourne think,"
she asked slowly, smiling, throwing back her head, and glancing
at him from head to foot, "that, to save my reputation, I ought
to get into the carriage?"
Winterbourne colored; for an instant he hesitated greatly.
It seemed so strange to hear her speak that way of her "reputation."
But he himself, in fact, must speak in accordance with gallantry.
The finest gallantry, here, was simply to tell her the truth;
and the truth, for Winterbourne, as the few indications I
have been able to give have made him known to the reader,
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