| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: A curious warmth and gladness stole over Peter Halket as he knelt; it was
as, when a little child, his mother folded him to her: he saw nothing more
about him but a soft bright light. Yet in it he heard a voice cry,
"Because thou hast loved mercy--and hated oppression--"
When Trooper Peter Halket raised himself, he saw the figure of the stranger
passing from him. He cried, "My Master, let me go with you." But the
figure did not turn. And, as it passed into the darkness, it seemed to
Peter Halket that the form grew larger and larger: and as it descended the
further side of the kopje it seemed that for one instant he still saw the
head with a pale, white light upon it: then it vanished.
And Trooper Peter Halket sat alone upon the kopje.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: sugar- maple, and the Virginian poplar mingled their branches
with those of the oak, the beech, and the lime. In these, as in
the forests of the Old World, destruction was perpetually going
on. The ruins of vegetation were heaped upon each other; but
there was no laboring hand to remove them, and their decay was
not rapid enough to make room for the continual work of
reproduction. Climbing plants, grasses, and other herbs forced
their way through the mass of dying trees; they crept along their
bending trunks, found nourishment in their dusty cavities, and a
passage beneath the lifeless bark. Thus decay gave its
assistance to life, and their respective productions were mingled
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: as a good physician, his agreeable conversation was a very great
support to me in the worst of this terrible time.
It was now the beginning of August, and the plague grew very
violent and terrible in the place where I lived, and Dr Heath coming to
visit me, and finding that I ventured so often out in the streets,
earnestly persuaded me to lock myself up and my family, and not to
suffer any of us to go out of doors; to keep all our windows fast,
shutters and curtains close, and never to open them; but first, to make
a very strong smoke in the room where the window or door was to be
opened, with rozen and pitch, brimstone or gunpowder and the like;
and we did this for some time; but as I had not laid in a store of
A Journal of the Plague Year |
