| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: we breathe a magnanimous atmosphere of thought and meet
generous and pious characters. Shakespeare has served me
best. Few living friends have had upon me an influence so
strong for good as Hamlet or Rosalind. The last character,
already well beloved in the reading, I had the good fortune
to see, I must think, in an impressionable hour, played by
Mrs. Scott Siddons. Nothing has ever more moved, more
delighted, more refreshed me; nor has the influence quite
passed away. Kent's brief speech over the dying Lear had a
great effect upon my mind, and was the burthen of my
reflections for long, so profoundly, so touchingly generous
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: Source day by day, bringing others with them; for they said that
their leader was really alive, though the form of his life had
changed, and that he met them in that high place while they
remembered him and prayed and sang songs of praise. More and
more the people learned to go with them, and the path grew
plainer and easier to find. The more the Source was revisited,
the more abundant it became, and the more it filled the river.
All the channels and the basins were supplied with water, and men
made new channels which were also filled. Some of those who were
diggers of trenches and hewers of cisterns said that it was
their work which had wrought the change. But the wisest and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
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