| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: in heaven to destroy the Government; while I shall have the most solemn
one to preserve, protect and defend it." This changed nothing in the
slave states. It was not enough for them that slavery could keep on where
it was. To spread it where it was not, had been their aim for a very long
while. The next day, March 5th, Lincoln had letters from Fort Sumter, in
Charleston harbor. Major Anderson was besieged there by the batteries of
secession, was being starved out, might hold on a month longer, needed
help. Through staggering complications and embarrassments, which were
presently to be outstaggered by worse ones, Lincoln by the end of March
saw his path clear. "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen,
and not mine, is the momentous issue of civil war." The clew to the path
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: Francesca. When this was over, the Princess had to take part in the
famous quartette, /Mi manca la voce/, which was sung by her with
Tinti, with the famous tenor Genovese, and with a well-known Italian
Prince then in exile, whose voice, if he had not been a Prince, would
have made him one of the Princes of Art.
"Take that seat," said Francesca to Rodolphe, pointing to her own
chair. "/Oime/! I think there is some mistake in my name; I have for
the last minute been Princess Rodolphini."
It was said with the artless grace which revived, in this avowal
hidden beneath a jest, the happy days at Gersau. Rodolphe reveled in
the exquisite sensation of listening to the voice of the woman he
Albert Savarus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Ere from the silent sombre shrine his lover had withdrawn.
Down the steep rock with hurried feet and fast
Clomb the brave lad, and reached the cave of Pan,
And heard the goat-foot snoring as he passed,
And leapt upon a grassy knoll and ran
Like a young fawn unto an olive wood
Which in a shady valley by the well-built city stood;
And sought a little stream, which well he knew,
For oftentimes with boyish careless shout
The green and crested grebe he would pursue,
Or snare in woven net the silver trout,
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