| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: want you to carry about a mental pocket-comb; only to be smooth
braided always in the morning.
Write down then, frankly, what you are, or, at least, what you think
yourself, not dwelling upon those inevitable faults which I have
just told you are of little consequence, and which the action of a
right life will shake or smooth away; but that you may determine to
the best of your intelligence what you are good for and can be made
into. You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and
the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and
delicatest ways, improve yourself. Thus, from the beginning,
consider all your accomplishments as means of assistance to others;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters: Is now uprear'd--and, fix'd against the light
Of the pale lamps, defined upon that sky,
It stands up like a column, straight and high.
I see it all--I know the dusky sign--
A cross on Calvary, which Jews uprear
While Romans watch; and when the dawn shall shine
Pilate, to judge the victim, will appear--
Pass sentence-yield Him up to crucify;
And on that cross the spotless Christ must die.
Dreams, then, are true--for thus my vision ran;
Surely some oracle has been with me,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: Piombos and their terrible passions were inscribed on this page of the
civil law as the annals of a people (contained, it may be, in one word
only,--Napoleon, Robespierre) are engraved on a tombstone. Ginevra
trembled. Like the dove on the face of the waters, having no place to
rest its feet but the ark, so Ginevra could take refuge only in the
eyes of Luigi from the cold and dreary waste around her.
The mayor assumed a stern, disapproving air, and his clerk looked up
at the couple with malicious curiosity. No marriage was ever so little
festal. Like other human beings when deprived of their accessories, it
became a simple act in itself, great only in thought.
After a few questions, to which the bride and bridegroom responded,
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