| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: life.
FOR THE FAMILY
AID us, if it be thy will, in our concerns. Have mercy on this
land and innocent people. Help them who this day contend in
disappointment with their frailties. Bless our family, bless our
forest house, bless our island helpers. Thou who hast made for us
this place of ease and hope, accept and inflame our gratitude; help
us to repay, in service one to another, the debt of thine unmerited
benefits and mercies, so that, when the period of our stewardship
draws to a conclusion, when the windows begin to be darkened, when
the bond of the family is to be loosed, there shall be no
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: incarnate demons. And then I set myself to reflect how I had
tended him in infancy, and watched him grow to youth, and followed
him almost through his whole course; and what absurd nonsense it
was to yield to that sense of horror. 'But where did he come from,
the little dark thing, harboured by a good man to his bane?'
muttered Superstition, as I dozed into unconsciousness. And I
began, half dreaming, to weary myself with imagining some fit
parentage for him; and, repeating my waking meditations, I tracked
his existence over again, with grim variations; at last, picturing
his death and funeral: of which, all I can remember is, being
exceedingly vexed at having the task of dictating an inscription
Wuthering Heights |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: I had said in my talk with Mrs. Grose on that horrid scene of Flora's
by the lake--and had perplexed her by so saying--that it would from
that moment distress me much more to lose my power than to keep it.
I had then expressed what was vividly in my mind: the truth that,
whether the children really saw or not--since, that is, it was
not yet definitely proved--I greatly preferred, as a safeguard,
the fullness of my own exposure. I was ready to know the very worst
that was to be known. What I had then had an ugly glimpse of was
that my eyes might be sealed just while theirs were most opened.
Well, my eyes WERE sealed, it appeared, at present--
a consummation for which it seemed blasphemous not to thank God.
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