| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: "But I don't hate 'em!" exclaimed Santa Claus positively. "Such
people do me no real harm, but merely render themselves and their
children unhappy. Poor things! I'd much rather help them any day
than injure them."
Indeed, the Daemons could not tempt old Santa Claus in any way. On
the contrary, he was shrewd enough to see that their object in
visiting him was to make mischief and trouble, and his cheery laughter
disconcerted the evil ones and showed to them the folly of such an
undertaking. So they abandoned honeyed words and determined to use force.
It was well known that no harm can come to Santa Claus while he is in
the Laughing Valley, for the fairies, and ryls, and knooks all protect
A Kidnapped Santa Claus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: egotist.
A ray of sunlight touched his wet pillow,--awoke him. He rushed
to the window, flung the latticed shutters apart, and looked out.
Something beautiful and ghostly filled all the
vistas,--frost-haze; and in some queer way the mist had
momentarily caught and held the very color of the sky. An azure
fog! Through it the quaint and checkered street--as yet but half
illumined by the sun,--took tones of impossible color; the view
paled away through faint bluish tints into transparent
purples;--all the shadows were indigo. How sweet the
morning!--how well life seemed worth living! Because the sun had
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: the influence of mental attention on various parts of the body, in his
`Medical Notes and Reflections,' 1839 p. 64. This essay, much enlarged,
was reprinted by Sir H. Holland in his `Chapters on Mental Physiology,'
1858, p. 79, from which work I always quote. At nearly the same time,
as well as subsequently, Prof. Laycock discussed the same subject:
see `Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal,' 1839, July, pp. 17-22. Also
his `Treatise on the Nervous Diseases of Women,' 1840, p. 110; and `Mind
and Brain,' vol. ii. 1860, p. 327. Dr. Carpenter's views on mesmerism
have a nearly similar bearing. The great physiologist Muller treated
(`Elements of Physiology,' Eng. translat. vol. ii. pp. 937, 1085)
of the influence of the attention on the senses. Sir J. Paget discusses
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
