| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy
cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve
strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it
happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time,
into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled.
And thus too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of
the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many
individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of
the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the
attention of no single individual before. And the rumour of this
new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: the page like a picture, and underneath it stood the mournful line:
'Optima dies ... prima fugit.'
III
IN LINCOLN THE BEST part of the theatrical season came late,
when the good companies stopped off there for one-night stands,
after their long runs in New York and Chicago. That spring
Lena went with me to see Joseph Jefferson in `Rip Van Winkle,'
and to a war play called `Shenandoah.' She was inflexible
about paying for her own seat; said she was in business now,
and she wouldn't have a schoolboy spending his money on her.
I liked to watch a play with Lena; everything was wonderful to her,
My Antonia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: Mademoiselle, who had grown to be "superb," and Paul, who had become
singularly sturdy; she spoke also of their deceased grandparents, whom
the Liebards had known, for they had been in the service of the family
for several generations.
Like its owners, the farm had an ancient appearance. The beams of the
ceiling were mouldy, the walls black with smoke and the windows grey
with dust. The oak sideboard was filled with all sorts of utensils,
plates, pitchers, tin bowls, wolf-traps. The children laughed when
they saw a huge syringe. There was not a tree in the yard that did not
have mushrooms growing around its foot, or a bunch of mistletoe
hanging in its branches. Several of the trees had been blown down, but
A Simple Soul |
