| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: out on a cruise and they had taken all the rowers with them; and these
would not have been found were it not that their master remained at
home that summer without going to sea in order to finish a galliot
that he had upon the stocks. To these men I said nothing more than
that the next Friday in the evening they were to come out stealthily
one by one and hang about Hadji Morato's garden, waiting for me
there until I came. These directions I gave each one separately,
with orders that if they saw any other Christians there they were
not to say anything to them except that I had directed them to wait at
that spot.
This preliminary having been settled, another still more necessary
Don Quixote |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: for centuries. It is his firm opinion that "it is a moral
impossible," so long as England is true to herself, that anything
can shake her; and he has much to say on the subject of the
national debt, which, somehow or other, he proves to be a
great national bulwark and blessing. He passed the greater part
of his life in the purlieus of Little Britain, until of late
years,
when, having become rich, and grown into the dignity of a
Sunday cane, he begins to take his pleasure and see the world.
He has therefore made several excursions to Hampstead,
Highgate, and other neighboring towns, where he has passed
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: This was all excellent, no doubt; so were the diaries I sometimes
tried to keep, but always and very speedily discarded, finding them
a school of posturing and melancholy self-deception. And yet this
was not the most efficient part of my training. Good though it
was, it only taught me (so far as I have learned them at all) the
lower and less intellectual elements of the art, the choice of the
essential note and the right word: things that to a happier
constitution had perhaps come by nature. And regarded as training,
it had one grave defect; for it set me no standard of achievement.
So that there was perhaps more profit, as there was certainly more
effort, in my secret labours at home. Whenever I read a book or a
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