The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: Success was partial--and fitful--still there was a result: ever and
anon, the veil seemed to vanish, in a sudden flash of light: but,
before I could fully realise the face, all was dark again. In each such
glimpse, the face seemed to grow more childish and more innocent:
and, when I had at last thought the veil entirely away, it was,
unmistakeably, the sweet face of little Sylvie!
"So, either I've been dreaming about Sylvie," I said to myself,
"and this is the reality. Or else I've really been with Sylvie,
and this is a dream! Is Life itself a dream, I wonder?"
To occupy the time, I got out the letter, which had caused me to take
this sudden railway-journey from my London home down to a strange
 Sylvie and Bruno |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: substances,--these act upon the testing instruments of the tongue, and
produce a more or less disagreeable sensation, while other particles
congenial to the tongue soften and harmonize them. The instruments of
taste reach from the tongue to the heart. Plato has a lively sense of the
manner in which sensation and motion are communicated from one part of the
body to the other, though he confuses the affections with the organs.
Hearing is a blow which passes through the ear and ends in the region of
the liver, being transmitted by means of the air, the brain, and the blood
to the soul. The swifter sound is acute, the sound which moves slowly is
grave. A great body of sound is loud, the opposite is low. Discord is
produced by the swifter and slower motions of two sounds, and is converted
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: lady and left her alone here. She was very ill when he brought her
here - so ill that he had to carry her upstairs. I wanted to go
for a doctor, but he said he was a doctor himself, and that he could
take care of his wife, who often had such attacks. He gave me some
medicine for her after I had put her to bed. I gave her the drops,
but it was a long while before she came to herself again.
"Then he told me that she had lost her mind, and that she believed
everybody was trying to harm her. She was so bad that he was taking
her to an asylum. But he hadn't found quite the right place yet,
and wanted me to keep her here until he knew where he could take her.
Once he left a revolver here by mistake. But I hid it so the lady
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