| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: house, his hayfield, and his garden. On this ship, where so many
accomplished artisans were fleeing from starvation, he was present on
a pleasure trip to visit a brother in New York.
Ere he started, he informed me, he had been warned against the
steerage and the steerage fare, and recommended to bring with him a
ham and tea and a spice loaf. But he laughed to scorn such counsels.
'I'm not afraid,' he had told his adviser; 'I'll get on for ten days.
I've not been a fisherman for nothing.' For it is no light matter,
as he reminded me, to be in an open boat, perhaps waist-deep with
herrings, day breaking with a scowl, and for miles on every hand lee-
shores, unbroken, iron-bound, surf-beat, with only here and there an
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: enough in his character of the last insurgent. Then was to have
come the turn of Tamasese; but it does not appear the disarming
would have had the same import or have been gone about in the same
way. Germany was bound to Tamasese. No honest man would dream of
blaming Knappe because he sought to redeem his country's word. The
path he chose was doubtless that of honour, so far as honour was
still left. But it proved to be the road to ruin.
Fritze, ranking German officer, is understood to have opposed the
measure. His attitude earned him at the time unpopularity among
his country-people on the spot, and should now redound to his
credit. It is to be hoped he extended his opposition to some of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: dying stranger? What claim had this unknown fragment of human
life upon his compassion or his service? If he lingered but
for an hour he could hardly reach Borsippa at the appointed
time. His companions would think he had given up the journey.
They would go without him. He would lose his quest.
But if he went on now, the man would surely die. If
Artaban stayed, life might be restored. His spirit throbbed
and fluttered with the urgency of the crisis. Should he risk
the great reward of his faith for the sake of a single deed of
charity? Should he turn aside, if only for a moment, from the
following of the star, to give a cup of cold water to a poor,
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