| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: fuming, like a steed impatient for a headlong rush; and the bell
rang out its hasty peal, so well expressing the brief summons
which life vouchsafes to us in its hurried career. Without
question or delay,--with the irresistible decision, if not rather
to be called recklessness, which had so strangely taken possession
of him, and through him of Hepzibah,--Clifford impelled her
towards the cars, and assisted her to enter. The signal was given;
the engine puffed forth its short, quick breaths; the train began
its movement; and, along with a hundred other passengers, these
two unwonted travellers sped onward like the wind.
At last, therefore, and after so long estrangement from everything
House of Seven Gables |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: perhaps, for her own consciousness, and perceptible only to such
intuitive discernment as that of the artist. But Owen, in the
latter stages of his pursuit, had risen out of the region in
which such a discovery might have been torture. He knew that the
world, and Annie as the representative of the world, whatever
praise might be bestowed, could never say the fitting word nor
feel the fitting sentiment which should be the perfect recompense
of an artist who, symbolizing a lofty moral by a material
trifle,--converting what was earthly to spiritual gold,--had won
the beautiful into his handiwork. Not at this latest moment was
he to learn that the reward of all high performance must be
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: texture.
"Come in," he said to the company of travelers; "you are at
your journey's end, and your mansions are ready for you."
John Weightman hesitated, for he was troubled by a doubt.
Suppose that he was not really, like his companions, at his
journey's end,
but only transported for a little while out of the regular course
of
his life into this mysterious experience? Suppose that, after
all,
he had not really passed through the door of death, like these
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