| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: pleasant to eat not made for the eater? Is there poison in that
which is sweet to drink? Trouble not thyself, but come with me to
another city. There is a little city hard by in which there is a
garden of tulip-trees. And there dwell in this comely garden white
peacocks and peacocks that have blue breasts. Their tails when
they spread them to the sun are like disks of ivory and like gilt
disks. And she who feeds them dances for their pleasure, and
sometimes she dances on her hands and at other times she dances
with her feet. Her eyes are coloured with stibium, and her
nostrils are shaped like the wings of a swallow. From a hook in
one of her nostrils hangs a flower that is carved out of a pearl.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: "Blister me...!" roared Blake, when the Duke interrupted him.
"By God, sir!" he cried, "I'll have no such disrespectful language
here. You'll observe the decency of speech and forbear from
profanities, you damned rogue, or by God! I'll commit you forthwith."
"I will endeavour," said Blake, with a sarcasm lost on Albemarle,
"to follow Your Grace's lofty example."
"You will do well, sir," said the Duke, and was shocked that Trenchard
should laugh at such a moment.
"I was about to protest, sir," said Blake, "that it is monstrous I
should be accused by Mr. Trenchard. He has but the slightest
acquaintance with me."
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: and sequence. He told the story of his angry flight, of toils and
calamities on sea and shore, of his ebbing and flowing fortune in
southern lands, and of his latest peril when, held a captive, he
served menially in a stronghold of bandits in the Sonora Mountains of
Mexico. And of the fever that seized him there and his escape and
delirium, during which he strayed, perhaps led by some marvellous
instinct, back to the river on whose bank he had been born. And of the
proud and stubborn thing in his blood that had kept him silent through
all those years, clouding the honour of one, though he knew it not,
and keeping apart two loving hearts. "What a thing is love!" you may
say. And if I grant it, you shall say, with me: "What a thing is
|
