| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: with their food. They know nothing about ships, nor oars that
are as the wings of a ship. He gave me this certain token which
I will not hide from you. He said that a wayfarer should meet me
and ask me whether it was a winnowing shovel that I had on my
shoulder. On this, I was to fix my oar in the ground and
sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar to Neptune; after which I
was to go home and offer hecatombs to all the gods in heaven,
one after the other. As for myself, he said that death should
come to me from the sea, and that my life should ebb away very
gently when I was full of years and peace of mind, and my people
should bless me. All this, he said, should surely come to pass."
The Odyssey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: his brother's hands and swore a good oath of joy.
There they stood--the long, brown fellow with the silk handkerchief
knotted over his flannel shirt, greeting tremendously the spruce
civilian, who had a rope-colored mustache and bore a fainthearted
resemblance to him. The story was plain on its face to the passers-by;
and one of the ladies who had come in the car with Lin turned twice, and
smiled gently to herself.
But Frank McLean's heart did not warm. He felt that what he had been
afraid of was true; and he saw he was being made conspicuous. He saw men
and women stare in the station, and he saw them staring as he and his
Western brother went through the streets. Lin strode along, sniffing the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: November 5, 1789; Mary, born November 20, 1791."
Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer's hands;
but Sir Walter had improved it by adding, for the information of
himself and his family, these words, after the date of Mary's birth--
"Married, December 16, 1810, Charles, son and heir of Charles
Musgrove, Esq. of Uppercross, in the county of Somerset,"
and by inserting most accurately the day of the month on which
he had lost his wife.
Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family,
in the usual terms; how it had been first settled in Cheshire;
how mentioned in Dugdale, serving the office of high sheriff,
Persuasion |
