| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: bear all his dear mother's weight, while she had kept him
company. His heart, you will understand, was now so heavy that
it seemed impossible, sometimes, to carry it any farther. But
his limbs were strong and active, and well accustomed to
exercise. He walked swiftly along, thinking of King Agenor and
Queen Telephassa, and his brothers, and the friendly Thasus,
all of whom he had left behind him, at one point of his
pilgrimage or another, and never expected to see them any more.
Full of these remembrances, he came within sight of a lofty
mountain, which the people thereabouts told him was called
Parnassus. On the slope of Mount Parnassus was the famous
Tanglewood Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: what an inflexibly obstinate old fellow this wizard Maule had been.
Now, the wizard's grandson, the young Matthew Maule of our story,
was popularly supposed to have inherited some of his ancestor's
questionable traits. It is wonderful how many absurdities were
promulgated in reference to the young man. He was fabled, for example,
to have a strange power of getting into people's dreams, and regulating
matters there according to his own fancy, pretty much like the
stage-manager of a theatre. There was a great deal of talk among
the neighbors, particularly the petticoated ones, about what they
called the witchcraft of Maule's eye. Some said that he could look
into people's minds; others, that, by the marvellous power of this
House of Seven Gables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: toward the Spirit of Life, who still stood near the threshold.
"I want to ask you a question," she said, in a troubled voice.
"Ask," said the Spirit.
"A little while ago," she began, slowly, "you told me that every
soul which has not found a kindred soul on earth is destined to
find one here."
"And have you not found one?" asked the Spirit.
"Yes; but will it be so with my husband's soul also?"
"No," answered the Spirit of Life, "for your husband imagined
that he had found his soul's mate on earth in you; and for such
delusions eternity itself contains no cure."
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