| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: The coming of the creature seems to have changed her whole nature
and made her unreasonable about experiments. She thinks more
of it than she does of any of the other animals, but is not able
to explain why. Her mind is disordered--everything shows it.
Sometimes she carries the fish in her arms half the night when it
complains and wants to get to the water. At such times the water
comes out of the places in her face that she looks out of, and she
pats the fish on the back and makes soft sounds with her mouth
to soothe it, and betrays sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways.
I have never seen her do like this with any other fish, and it
troubles me greatly. She used to carry the young tigers around so,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: Emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty's prime minister of
state, and other great mandarins of the court in joints from the
gibbet, at four hundred crowns. Neither indeed can I deny, that
if the same use were made of several plump young girls in this
town, who without one single groat to their fortunes, cannot stir
abroad without a chair, and appear at a play-house and assemblies
in foreign fineries which they never will pay for; the kingdom
would not be the worse.
Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about
that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or
maimed; and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what course
A Modest Proposal |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: She seemed to want to say something to me, and yet she did not dare
to speak. Is something to happen to-day then? I did not close my
eyes all night. Can one be made insane from a distance? hypnotised
into it, as it were? I will not allow fear alone to make me mad.
My enemy shall not find it too easy. He may kill my body, but that
is all - "
These were the last words which Asta Langen had written in her
notebook, the little book which was the only confidant of her
terrible need. When the detective had finished reading it, he closed
his eyes for a few minutes to let the impression made by the story
sink into his mind.
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