| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: waited, never waggling things at her out of his turn nor saying
"Here!" with horrid sharpness. He waited for pottering old ladies,
for gaping slaveys, for the perpetual Buttonses from Thrupp's; and
the thing in all this that she would have liked most unspeakably to
put to the test was the possibility of her having for him a
personal identity that might in a particular way appeal. There
were moments when he actually struck her as on her side, as
arranging to help, to support, to spare her.
But such was the singular spirit of our young friend that she could
remind herself with a pang that when people had awfully good
manners--people of that class,--you couldn't tell. These manners
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: to a most ordinary good peasant lad. To hear it told by a
prisoner dressed in this degrading clothing, and inside a prison,
seemed very strange to Nekhludoff. Nekhludoff listened, and at
the same time kept looking around him--at the low bedstead with
its straw mattress, the window and the dirty, damp wall, and the
piteous face and form of this unfortunate, disfigured peasant in
his prison cloak and shoes, and he felt sadder and sadder, and
would have liked not to believe what this good-natured fellow was
saying. It seemed too dreadful to think that men could do such a
thing as to take a man, dress him in convict clothes, and put him
in this horrible place without any reason only because he himself
Resurrection |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: loyal to his lords.
Book XVI
Telemachus sends Eumaeus to the city to tell his mother of
his return. And how, in the meantime, Odysseus discovers
himself to his son.
Now these twain, Odysseus and the goodly swineherd, within
the hut had kindled a fire, and were making ready breakfast
at the dawn, and had sent forth the herdsmen with the
droves of swine. And round Telemachus the hounds, that love
to bark, fawned and barked not, as he drew nigh. And goodly
Odysseus took note of the fawning of the dogs, and the
The Odyssey |
