| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: at random, or you know more of the earl's designs than beseems your frock."
"Let my frock," said brother Michael, "answer for its own sins.
It is worn past covering mine. It is too weak for a shield,
too transparent for a screen, too thin for a shelter,
too light for gravity, and too threadbare for a jest.
The wearer would be naught indeed who should misbeseem such
a wedding garment.
But wherefore does the sheep wear wool?
That he in season sheared may be,
And the shepherd be warm though his flock be cool:
So I'll have a new cloak about me."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: But keep your ain state wi' them--I ken the race o' them weel--
they will think the mair o' ye."
"Why, now, you go father than I do, Caleb," said the Master,
drowning a certain degree of consciousness in a forced laugh;
"you are for marrying me into a family that you will nto allow me
to visit, how this? and you look as pale as death besides."
"Oh, sir," repeated Caleb again, "you would but laugh if I tauld
it; but Thomas the Rhymer, whose tongue couldna be fause, spoke
the word of your house that will e'en prove ower true if you go
to Ravenswood this day. Oh, that it should e'er have been
fulfilled in my time!"
The Bride of Lammermoor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: live, but without depriving you of a single day of your life."
"He is raving," thought Don Juan. Aloud he added, "Yes, dearest
father, yes; you shall live, of course, as long as I live, for
your image will be for ever in my heart."
"It is not that kind of life that I mean," said the old noble,
summoning all his strength to sit up in bed; for a thrill of
doubt ran through him, one of those suspicions that come into
being under a dying man's pillow. "Listen, my son," he went on,
in a voice grown weak with that last effort, "I have no more wish
to give up life than you to give up wine and mistresses, horses
and hounds, and hawks and gold----"
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