| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: consternation at this unlooked-for reply to his last observation.
"Why didn't you come before," continued the dwarf, "instead of
sending me those rascally brothers of yours, for me to have the
trouble of turning into stones? Very hard stones they make, too."
"O dear me!" said Gluck, "have you really been so cruel?"
"Cruel!" said the dwarf; "they poured unholy water into my
stream. Do you suppose I'm going to allow that?"
"Why," said Gluck, "I am sure, sir,--your Majesty, I mean,--
they got the water out of the church font."
"Very probably," replied the dwarf, "but" (and his
countenance grew stern as he spoke) "the water which has been
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: head. I could not tell what tree to call it that these stakes were
cut from. I was surprised, and yet very well pleased, to see the
young trees grow; and I pruned them, and led them up to grow as
much alike as I could; and it is scarce credible how beautiful a
figure they grew into in three years; so that though the hedge made
a circle of about twenty-five yards in diameter, yet the trees, for
such I might now call them, soon covered it, and it was a complete
shade, sufficient to lodge under all the dry season. This made me
resolve to cut some more stakes, and make me a hedge like this, in
a semi-circle round my wall (I mean that of my first dwelling),
which I did; and placing the trees or stakes in a double row, at
Robinson Crusoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: year, perched upon a cane-seated chair in a space as narrow as a
lieutenant's cabin on board a man-of-war. Such a man must be able to
defy anchylosis of the knee and thigh joints; he must have a soul
above meanness, in order to live meanly; must lose all relish for
money by dint of handling it. Demand this peculiar specimen of any
creed, educational system, school, or institution you please, and
select Paris, that city of fiery ordeals and branch establishment of
hell, as the soil in which to plant the said cashier. So be it.
Creeds, schools, institutions and moral systems, all human rules and
regulations, great and small, will, one after another, present much
the same face that an intimate friend turns upon you when you ask him
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