| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: speeches were made to me by Mataafa and his orators, of which
he could make nothing but they were 'very much surprised' -
his way of pronouncing obliged - and as he could understand
nothing that fell from me except the same form of words, the
dialogue languished and all business had to be laid aside.
We had kava, and then a dish of arrowroot; one end of the
house was screened off for us with a fine tapa, and we lay
and slept, the three of us heads and tails, upon the mats
till dinner. After dinner his illegitimate majesty and
myself had a walk, and talked as well as my twopenny Samoan
would admit. Then there was a dance to amuse the ladies
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: always carried between them a green banner marked with the hoof and the
horn and the caption, "Long live Comrade Napoleon!" Afterwards there were
recitations of poems composed in Napoleon's honour, and a speech by
Squealer giving particulars of the latest increases in the production of
foodstuffs, and on occasion a shot was fired from the gun. The sheep were
the greatest devotees of the Spontaneous Demonstration, and if anyone
complained (as a few animals sometimes did, when no pigs or dogs were near)
that they wasted time and meant a lot of standing about in the cold, the
sheep were sure to silence him with a tremendous bleating of "Four legs
good, two legs bad!" But by and large the animals enjoyed these
celebrations. They found it comforting to be reminded that, after all,
Animal Farm |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: charity without reproach. Every man HAD his own, and every man
had, to meet this charity, the ample resources of the soul.
It was doubtless the voice of Mary Antrim that spoke for them best;
as the years at any rate went by he found himself in regular
communion with these postponed pensioners, those whom indeed he
always called in his thoughts the Others. He spared them the
moments, he organised the charity. Quite how it had risen he
probably never could have told you, but what came to pass was that
an altar, such as was after all within everybody's compass, lighted
with perpetual candles and dedicated to these secret rites, reared
itself in his spiritual spaces. He had wondered of old, in some
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