| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: and he would do his best and venture it. The man gave him the
helm, and he stood directly in among the rocks, the people standing
on the shore thinking they were mad, and that they would in a few
minutes be dashed in a thousand pieces.
"But when they came nearer, and the people found they steered as if
they knew the place, they made signals to them to direct them as
well as they could, and the young bold fellow run her into a small
cove, where she stuck fast, as it were, between the rocks on both
sides, there being but just room enough for the breadth of the
ship. The ship indeed, giving two or three knocks, staved and
sunk, but the man and the two youths jumped ashore and were safe;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: was the name which the Hellens gave to men who were brave and
skilful, and dare do more than other men. At first, I think,
that was all it meant: but after a time it came to mean
something more; it came to mean men who helped their country;
men in those old times, when the country was half-wild, who
killed fierce beasts and evil men, and drained swamps, and
founded towns, and therefore after they were dead, were
honoured, because they had left their country better than
they found it. And we call such a man a hero in English to
this day, and call it a 'heroic' thing to suffer pain and
grief, that we may do good to our fellow-men. We may all do
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: for it, and no man who was so much of an absorbent can ever have
been so little of a parasite. He had a system of the universe, but
he had no system of sponging--that was quite hand-to-mouth. He had
fine gross easy senses, but it was not his good-natured appetite
that wrought confusion. If he had loved us for our dinners we
could have paid with our dinners, and it would have been a great
economy of finer matter. I make free in these connexions with the
plural possessive because if I was never able to do what the
Mulvilles did, and people with still bigger houses and simpler
charities, I met, first and last, every demand of reflexion, of
emotion--particularly perhaps those of gratitude and of resentment.
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