| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: studies, he who is yet employed in groping for his premises,
should keep his mind fluent and sensitive, keen to mark
flaws, and willing to surrender untenable positions. He
should keep himself teachable, or cease the expensive farce
of being taught. It is to further this docile spirit that we
desire to press the claims of debating societies. It is as a
means of melting down this museum of premature petrifactions
into living and impressionable soul that we insist on their
utility. If we could once prevail on our students to feel no
shame in avowing an uncertain attitude towards any subject,
if we could teach them that it was unnecessary for every lad
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: I had stood on that bridge at midnight
And gazed on that wave and sky!
How often, oh, how often,
I had wished that the ebbing tide
Would bear me away on its bosom
O'er the ocean wild and wide!
For my heart was hot and restless,
And my life was full of care,
And the burden laid upon me
Seemed greater than I could bear.
But now it has fallen from me,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: Sleeps with the weary at length; but, honoured and ever fair,
Shines in the eye of the mind the crown of the silver hair.
Honolulu.
XXXIII - TO MY WIFE (A Fragment)
LONG must elapse ere you behold again
Green forest frame the entry of the lane -
The wild lane with the bramble and the brier,
The year-old cart-tracks perfect in the mire,
The wayside smoke, perchance, the dwarfish huts,
And ramblers' donkey drinking from the ruts: -
Long ere you trace how deviously it leads,
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