| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: quacks and creates a passionate demand for impudent pretences that
doctors can cure the diseases they themselves die of daily, so our
ignorance and helplessness set us clamoring for spiritual and moral
quacks who pretend that they can save our souls from their own
damnation. If a doctor were to say to his patients, "I am familiar
with your symptoms, because I have seen other people in your
condition; and I will bring the very little knowledge we have to your
treatment; but except in that very shallow sense I dont know what is
the matter with you; and I cant undertake to cure you," he would be a
lost man professionally; and if a clergyman, on being called on to
award a prize for good conduct in the village school, were to say, "I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: mechanical acquaintance with most of its rules. No smile, no
trace of pleasure or satisfaction appeared in Sylvie's nun-like
and passive face as she heard her name read first. I always felt
saddened by the sight of that poor girl's absolute quiescence on
all occasions, and it was my custom to look at her, to address
her, as seldom as possible; her extreme docility, her assiduous
perseverance, would have recommended her warmly to my good
opinion; her modesty, her intelligence, would have induced me to
feel most kindly--most affectionately towards her,
notwithstanding the almost ghastly plainness of her features, the
disproportion of her form, the corpse-like lack of animation in
The Professor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: big house. I'm too nervous to do it any more.' But I jes'
reckon to myself that ef it's too skeery fer her, it's too skeery
fer me. We had it, then, sho' nuff, and it ended up with Mis'
Watson stayin' in the lodge nights an' me lookin' fer work at de
club."
"Did Mrs. Watson say that anything had happened to alarm her?"
"No, sah. She was jes' natchally skeered. Well, that was all,
far's I know, until the night I come over to see Mis' Innes. I
come across the valley, along the path from the club-house, and I
goes home that way. Down in the creek bottom I almost run into a
man. He wuz standin' with his back to me, an' he was workin'
The Circular Staircase |
