| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: 'Ah, but this is the jail!' cried Herrick. 'Don't tempt me. It's
the jail.'
'Did you hear what the skipper said on board that schooner?'
pursued the captain. 'Well, I tell you he talked straight. The
French have let us alone for a long time; It can't last longer;
they've got their eye on us; and as sure as you live, in three
weeks you'll be in jail whatever you do. I read it in the
consul's face.'
'You forget, captain,' said the young man. 'There is another
way. I can die; and to say truth, I think I should have died
three years ago.'
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: smuggler, bought at the subsequent sale four carronades, and
despatched them with a letter to the French Assembly. Letter
and guns were stopped at Dover by the English officials;
there was trouble for Burns with his superiors; he was
reminded firmly, however delicately, that, as a paid
official, it was his duty to obey and to be silent; and all
the blood of this poor, proud, and falling man must have
rushed to his head at the humiliation. His letter to Mr.
Erskine, subsequently Earl of Mar, testifies, in its turgid,
turbulent phrases, to a perfect passion of alarmed self-
respect and vanity. He had been muzzled, and muzzled, when
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: force of man: when they fail, therefore, they fail not
by idleness or timidity, but by rash adventure and
fruitless diligence.
That the attempts of such men will often
miscarry, we may reasonably expect; yet from such
men, and such only, are we to hope for the cultivation
of those parts of nature which lie yet waste, and
the invention of those arts which are yet wanting
to the felicity of life. If they are, therefore,
universally discouraged, art and discovery can make no
advances. Whatever is attempted without previous
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