| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: Mrs. Luke Dawson, wife of the richest man in town, gaped
at them piteously when they appeared. Her expensive frock
of beaver-colored satin with rows, plasters, and pendants of
solemn brown beads was intended for a woman twice her size.
She stood wringing her hands in front of nineteen folding
chairs, in her front parlor with its faded photograph of
Minnehaha Falls in 1890, its "colored enlargement" of Mr. Dawson,
its bulbous lamp painted with sepia cows and mountains and
standing on a mortuary marble column.
She creaked, "O Mrs. Kennicott, I'm in such a fix. I'm
supposed to lead the discussion, and I wondered would you
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon: command what lies before the horse's feet. A horse, moreover, of this
build, however spirited, will be least capable of overmastering the
rider,[18] since it is not by arching but by stretching out his neck
and head that a horse endeavours to assert his power.[19]
[16] Lit. "the thighs below the shoulder-blades" are distinguished
from "the thighs below the tail." They correspond respectively to
our "arms" (i.e. forearms) and "gaskins," and anatomically
speaking = the radius (os brachii) and the tibia.
[17] "Slack towards the flexure" (Stonehenge).
[18] Or, "of forcing the rider's hand and bolting."
[19] Or, "to display violence or run away."
On Horsemanship |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: Pride of Life, feasting blindly on the wine of iniquity, with her
back turned to the light which has shone for her in vain?
Something of both these meanings may be traced in the picture;
but to me it symbolizes rather the central truth of existence:
that all that is raised in incorruption is sown in corruption;
art, beauty, love, religion; that all our wine is drunk out of
skulls, and poured for us by the mysterious genius of a remote
and cruel past."
The doctor's face blazed: his bent figure seemed to straighten
itself and become taller.
"Ah," he cried, growing more dithyrambic, "how lightly you ask
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