| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: It takes an immense amount of time, and everything else has got
terribly behindhand. I don't mean to say that the experiment
itself has gone on very fast; but I am trying to push
it forward. I have n't yet had time to test its success;
but in this I want your help. You know we great physicists
never make an experiment without an 'assistant'--a humble
individual who burns his fingers and stains his clothes
in the cause of science, but whose interest in the problem
is only indirect. I want you to be my assistant, and I will
guarantee that your burns and stains shall not be dangerous.
She is an extremely interesting girl, and I really want you
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: But why be dusted -- when we're all alike,
All equal, and all happy. Here he comes --
And there he goes. And we, by your new patent,
Would seem to be two kings here by the wayside,
With our two hats off to his Excellency.
Why not his Majesty, and done with it?
Forgive me if I shook your meditation,
But you that weld our credit should have eyes
To see what's coming. Bury me first if -I- do.
HAMILTON
There's always in some pocket of your brain
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: 'Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die.' I have gone
through so many yesterdays when I strove with Death that I have
realised to its full the wisdom of that sentence; and it is to me
not merely a figure of speech, but a literal fact. Any to-morrow
I might die. It is scarcely two months since I came back from
the grave: is it worth while to be anything but radiantly glad?
Of all things that life or perhaps my temperament has given me I
prize the gift of laughter as beyond price."
Her desire, always, was to be "a wild free thing of the air like
the birds, with a song in my heart." A spirit of too much fire
in too frail a body, it was rarely that her desire was fully
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