| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: so serves the turn of instruction. But the course of our
education is answered best by those poems and romances where
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
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Near the center of the clearing, and not far from the
drum, or altar, he commenced to dig. This was harder work
than turning up the freshly excavated earth at the grave, but
Tarzan of the Apes was persevering and so he kept at his
labor until he was rewarded by seeing a hole sufficiently deep
to receive the chest and effectually hide it from view.
Why had he gone to all this labor without knowing the
value of the contents of the chest?
Tarzan of the Apes had a man's figure and a man's brain,
but he was an ape by training and environment. His brain
told him that the chest contained something valuable, or the
Tarzan of the Apes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: He handed the gold coin to his wife, and then went out to put on his
National Guard's uniform, impelled thereto by the idea of making some
adequate return for the money; an idea that sometimes slips into a
tradesman's head when he has been prodigiously overpaid for goods of
no great value. He took up his cap, buckled on his sabre, and came out
in full dress. But his wife had had time to reflect, and reflection,
as not unfrequently happens, closed the hand that kindly intentions
had opened. Feeling frightened and uneasy lest her husband might be
drawn into something unpleasant, she tried to catch at the skirt of
his coat, to hold him back, but he, good soul, obeying his charitable
first thought, brought out his offer to see the lady home, before his
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