| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: whirling round and round in the air. Every eye watched it as it
wheeled and fell. The haft struck the ground first.
"Come hither, thou," said Chaka to the tall brother. "Hasten back to
the kraal of Makedama, and say to him, Thus says Chaka, the Lion of
the Zulu-ka-Malandela, 'Years ago thy tribe refused me milk. To-day
the dog of thy son Mopo howls upon the roof of thy hut.' Begone!"[1]
[1] Among the Zulus it is a very bad omen for a dog to climb the roof
of a hut. The saying conveyed a threat to be appreciated by every
Zulu.--ED.
The man turned, shook his brother by the hand, and went, bearing the
words of evil omen.
Nada the Lily |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: had before him in sharper incision than ever the open page of his
story. The name on the table smote him as the passage of his
neighbour had done, and what it said to him, full in the face, was
that she was what he had missed. This was the awful thought, the
answer to all the past, the vision at the dread clearness of which
he turned as cold as the stone beneath him. Everything fell
together, confessed, explained, overwhelmed; leaving him most of
all stupefied at the blindness he had cherished. The fate he had
been marked for he had met with a vengeance--he had emptied the cup
to the lees; he had been the man of his time, THE man, to whom
nothing on earth was to have happened. That was the rare stroke--
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: for I suppose no other nation has lost as many ships, or sent
as many brave fellows to the bottom.
There is nowhere such a background for heroism as the
noble, terrifying, and picturesque conditions of some of our
sea fights. Hawke's battle in the tempest, and Aboukir at the
moment when the French Admiral blew up, reach the limit of
what is imposing to the imagination. And our naval annals owe
some of their interest to the fantastic and beautiful
appearance of old warships and the romance that invests the
sea and everything sea-going in the eyes of English lads on a
half-holiday at the coast. Nay, and what we know of the
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