| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: your fact, it takes on color. It is all the difference be-
tween hearing of a man being stabbed to the heart, and
seeing it done. In the stillness and the darkness, the
knowledge that I was in deadly danger took to itself
deeper and deeper meaning all the time; a something
which was realization crept inch by inch through my
veins and turned me cold.
But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times
like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to
a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies.
Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,
Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.
Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear
Has grown familiar with your song;
I hear it in the opening year,
I listen, and it cheers me long.
HYMN OF THE MORAVIAN NUNS OF BETHLEHEM
AT THE CONSECRATION OF PULASKI'S BANNER.
When the dying flame of day
Through the chancel shot its ray,
Far the glimmering tapers shed
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: had the idea since that he was jealous. He wasn't jealous of
mankind any more than he was afraid of thieves for his collection;
but he may have been jealous of what he could see in me, of some
passion that could be aroused. But if so he never repented. I
shall never forget his last words. He saw me standing beside his
bed, defenceless, symbolic and forlorn, and all he found to say
was, 'Well, I am like that.'
I forgot myself in watching her. I had never seen anybody speak
with less play of facial muscles. In the fullness of its life her
face preserved a sort of immobility. The words seemed to form
themselves, fiery or pathetic, in the air, outside her lips. Their
The Arrow of Gold |
