| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: fought against him, but, further, to some gave honors and
offices; as particularly to Brutus and Cassius, who both of them
were praetors. Pompey's images that were thrown down, he set up
again, upon which Cicero also said that by raising Pompey's
statues he had fixed his own. When his friends advised him to
have a guard, and several offered their service, he would not
hear of it; but said it was better to suffer death once, than
always to live in fear of it. He looked upon the affections of
the people to be the best and surest guard, and entertained them
again with public feasting, and general distributions of corn;
and to gratify his army, he sent out colonies to several places,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: "It is not that kind of life that I mean," said the old noble,
summoning all his strength to sit up in bed; for a thrill of
doubt ran through him, one of those suspicions that come into
being under a dying man's pillow. "Listen, my son," he went on,
in a voice grown weak with that last effort, "I have no more wish
to give up life than you to give up wine and mistresses, horses
and hounds, and hawks and gold----"
"I can well believe it," thought the son; and he knelt down by
the bed and kissed Bartolommeo's cold hands. "But, father, my
dear father," he added aloud, "we must submit to the will of
God."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: the little brook that whimpered by his school-house, and there
con over old Mather's direful tales, until the gathering dusk of
evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then,
as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to
the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of
nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited
imagination, --the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside,
the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the
dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the
thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too,
which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
