| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: #STARTMARK#
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.
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. . .
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: of the task when you hear the end of the story. Of the forty-two
volunteers, Gondrin is the only one alive to-day. Thirty-nine of them
lost their lives in the Beresina, and the two others died miserably in
a Polish hospital.
"The poor fellow himself only returned from Wilna in 1814, to find the
Bourbons restored to power. General Eble (of whom Gondrin cannot speak
without tears in his eyes) was dead. The pontooner was deaf, and his
health was shattered; and as he could neither read nor write, he found
no one left to help him or to plead his cause. He begged his way to
Paris, and while there made application at the War Office, not for the
thousand francs of extra pension which had been promised to him, nor
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: For he shall die as never dog died yet.
And now, the sign, what is it?
MORANZONE
This dagger, boy;
It was your father's.
GUIDO
Oh, let me look at it!
I do remember now my reputed uncle,
That good old husbandman I left at home,
Told me a cloak wrapped round me when a babe
Bare too such yellow leopards wrought in gold;
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