| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: the woods, they cut roads in every direction, leading nowhither,
and the unwary wanderer is thereby led aside from the right way,
and entangled in the undergrowth. And as for Nature, she is
entirely opposed to continuance of paths through her forest. She
covers them with fallen leaves, and hides them with thick bushes.
She drops great trees across them, and blots then out with
windfalls. But the blazed line--a succession of broad axe-marks on
the trunks of the trees, just high enough to catch the eye on a
level--cannot be so easily obliterated, and this, after all, is the
safest guide through the woods.
Our trail led us at first through a natural meadow, overgrown with
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: on the spot to feel any doubt as to her knowing my secret, though I did
not in the least suspect that Miss Tita had not just spoken the truth.
She had not betrayed me, but the old woman's brooding instinct had
served her; she had turned me over and over in the long, still hours,
and she had guessed. The worst of it was that she looked terribly
like an old woman who at a pinch would burn her papers. Miss Tita pushed
a chair forward, saying to me, "This will be a good place for you to sit."
As I took possession of it I asked after Miss Bordereau's health;
expressed the hope that in spite of the very hot weather it was satisfactory.
She replied that it was good enough--good enough; that it was a great
thing to be alive.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: theory, for he held the world too mysterious to be
criticised, and asks conclusively: "What right have I to
grieve who have not ceased to wonder?" But it sprang still
more from constitutional indifference and superiority; and he
grew up healthy, composed, and unconscious from among life's
horrors, like a green bay-tree from a field of battle. It
was from this lack in himself that he failed to do justice to
the spirit of Christ; for while he could glean more meaning
from individual precepts than any score of Christians, yet he
conceived life in such a different hope, and viewed it with
such contrary emotions, that the sense and purport of the
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