| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: office by Father Damien which served only to publish the weakness
of that noble man. He was rough in his ways, and he had no
control. Authority was relaxed; Damien's life was threatened, and
he was soon eager to resign."
C. "Of Damien I begin to have an idea. He seems to have been a
man of the peasant class, certainly of the peasant type: shrewd,
ignorant and bigoted, yet with an open mind, and capable of
receiving and digesting a reproof if it were bluntly administered;
superbly generous in the least thing as well as in the greatest,
and as ready to give his last shirt (although not without human
grumbling) as he had been to sacrifice his life; essentially
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: the first row in the reserved seats, and there in the row
behind were all our friends - Captain Foss and his Captain-
Lieutenant, three of the American officers, very nice
fellows, the Dr., etc, so we made a fine show of what an
embittered correspondent of the local paper called 'the
shoddy aristocracy of Apia'; and you should have seen how we
carried on, and how I clapped, and Captain Foss hollered
'WUNDERSCHON!' and threw himself forward in his seat, and how
we all in fact enjoyed ourselves like school-children, Austin
not a shade more than his neighbours. Then the Circus broke
up, and the party went home, but I stayed down, having
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: happening to meet such an one he would not say to him savagely, 'Fool, you
are mad!' But like a musician, in a gentle and harmonious tone of voice,
he would answer: 'My good friend, he who would be a harmonist must
certainly know this, and yet he may understand nothing of harmony if he has
not got beyond your stage of knowledge, for you only know the preliminaries
of harmony and not harmony itself.'
PHAEDRUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And will not Sophocles say to the display of the would-be
tragedian, that this is not tragedy but the preliminaries of tragedy? and
will not Acumenus say the same of medicine to the would-be physician?
PHAEDRUS: Quite true.
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