| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: November 22, 1993, on the day of the 30th anniversary
of his assassination.
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, given November 19, 1863
on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA
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Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth
upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: own emotion. He had flattered himself on the possession of more
philosophy. He thought that this famous sense of
self-preservation was a queer thing, a purely animal thing. "For,
as a thinking man," he reflected, "I really ought not to care."
It was probably the unusual that affected him. Clearly. If he had
been lying seriously ill in a room in a hotel and had overheard
some ominous whispers he would not have cared in the least. Ah,
but then he would have been ill--and in illness one grows so
indifferent. Illness is a great help to unemotional behaviour,
which of course is the correct behaviour for a man of the world.
He almost regretted he was not very ill. But, then, Mr. Travers
The Rescue |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: had begun flicking the other's nose in order, as he phrased it, to
keep the flies off him. This kind of game naturally diverted the
actors to any extent.
But success had suddenly thrown Mignon off his balance. He had
launched forth into extravagant courses and had given the journalist
a box on the ear, an actual, a vigorous, box on the ear. This time
he had gone too far: in the presence of so many spectators it was
impossible for Fauchery to pocket such a blow with laughing
equanimity. Whereupon the two men had desisted from their farce,
had sprung at one another's throats, their faces livid with hate,
and were now rolling over and over behind a set of side lights,
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