| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: allegiance, heart and hand.''
``My son,'' said Edith, ``think on thy royal
rights!''
``Think on the freedom of England, degenerate
Prince!'' said Cedric.
``Mother and friend,'' said Athelstane, ``a truce
to your upbraidings---bread and water and a dungeon
are marvellous mortifiers of ambition, and I
rise from the tomb a wiser man than I descended
into it. One half of those vain follies were puffed
into mine ear by that perfidious Abbot Wolfram,
Ivanhoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: displeasing, as all labour is apt to be, however great its ultimate reward.
In a life of twenty-eight years this woman had probably not contributed one
hour's earnest toil, mental or physical, to the increase of the sum total
of productive human labour. Surrounded with acres of cultivable land, she
would possibly have preferred to lie down and die of hunger rather than
have cultivated half an acre for food. This is an extreme case; but the
ultimate effect of parasitism is always a paralysis of the will and an
inability to compel oneself into any course of action for the moment
unpleasurable and exhaustive.)
That the two problems are not identical is shown, if indeed evidence were
needed, by the fact that those males most actively employed in attempting
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: There was a tiny ledge or crevice running part of the way across the
face of this wall, and by this four-inch path I edged along, holding
my rod in one hand, and clinging affectionately with the other to
such clumps of grass and little bushes as I could find. There was
one small huckleberry plant to which I had a particular attachment.
It was fortunately a firm little bush, and as I held fast to it I
remembered Tennyson's poem which begins
"Flower in the crannied wall,"
and reflected that if I should succeed in plucking out this flower,
"root and all," it would probably result in an even greater increase
of knowledge than the poet contemplated.
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