| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: bottom of a dark ravine. But at length he could distinctly hear
at a distance the sullen toll of a large bell.
"That," said he, "must be the alarm--the storm-clock, as the
Germans call it."
"It strikes the hour of your death," answered Ranald, "unless you
can accompany me a little farther. For every toll of that bell a
brave man has yielded up his soul."
"Truly, Ranald, my trusty friend," said Dalgetty, "I will not
deny that the case may be soon my own; for I am so forfoughen
(being, as I explained to you, IMPEDITUS, for had I been
EXPEDITUS, I mind not pedestrian exercise the flourish of a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: cigar. "But the walk is worth the trouble. If it were not that
you must have heard it so often, Kirby, I would tell you that
your works look like Dante's Inferno."
Kirby laughed.
"Yes. Yonder is Farinata himself in the burning tomb,"--
pointing to some figure in the shimmering shadows.
"Judging from some of the faces of your men," said the other,
"they bid fair to try the reality of Dante's vision, some day."
Young Kirby looked curiously around, as if seeing the faces of
his hands for the first time.
"They're bad enough, that's true. A desperate set, I fancy.
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: only that he shouldn't, as an anticlimax, have been taken sleeping
so sound as not to be able to win back by an effort of thought the
lost stuff of consciousness. He declared to himself at moments
that he would either win it back or have done with consciousness
for ever; he made this idea his one motive in fine, made it so much
his passion that none other, to compare with it, seemed ever to
have touched him. The lost stuff of consciousness became thus for
him as a strayed or stolen child to an unappeasable father; he
hunted it up and down very much as if he were knocking at doors and
enquiring of the police. This was the spirit in which, inevitably,
he set himself to travel; he started on a journey that was to be as
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