| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: those who are given to change their opinions, and short of
substantial demerit, those who have once gained my favour
continue to enjoy it; but I have a singular swiftness of
decision, read my fellow men and women with a glance, and
have acted throughout life on first impressions. Yours, as I
tell you, has been favourable; and if, as I suppose, you are
a young fellow of somewhat idle habits, I think it not
improbable that we may strike a bargain.'
'Ah, madam,' returned Somerset, 'you have divined my
situation. I am a man of birth, parts, and breeding;
excellent company, or at least so I find myself; but by a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: famous kind of crows which is known by the name of the Cornish
cough or chough (so the country people call them). They are the
same kind which are found in Switzerland among the Alps, and which
Pliny pretended were peculiar to those mountains, and calls the
PYRRHOCORAX. The body is black; the legs, feet, and bill of a deep
yellow, almost to a red. I could not find that it was affected for
any good quality it had, nor is the flesh good to eat, for it feeds
much on fish and carrion; it is counted little better than a kite,
for it is of ravenous quality, and is very mischievous. It will
steal and carry away anything it finds about the house that is not
too heavy, though not fit for its food--as knives, forks, spoons,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: The further he goes the more obscure the whole process becomes,
until, after long groping about for some means of orienting himself,
he lights at last upon the clue. This clue consists in "the survival
of the unfittest."
In the civilization of Japan we have presented to us a most
interesting case of partially arrested development; or, to speak
esoterically, we find ourselves placed face to face with a singular
example of a completed race-life. For though from our standpoint the
evolution of these people seems suddenly to have come to an end in
mid-career, looked at more intimately it shows all the signs of
having fully run its course. Development ceased, not because of
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