| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: listened doubtingly an instant; detected the disturber, then turned
and dozed, and dreamt again: if possible, still more disagreeably
than before.
This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard
distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard,
also, the fir bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to
the right cause: but it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to
silence it, if possible; and, I thought, I rose and endeavoured to
unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple: a
circumstance observed by me when awake, but forgotten. 'I must
stop it, nevertheless!' I muttered, knocking my knuckles through
Wuthering Heights |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: Xenophon the Athenian was born 431 B.C. He was a
pupil of Socrates. He marched with the Spartans,
and was exiled from Athens. Sparta gave him land
and property in Scillus, where he lived for many
years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
Anabasis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: his desert. He had settled to his safety and accepted perforce his
extinction; figuring to himself, with some colour, in the likeness
of certain little old men he remembered to have seen, of whom, all
meagre and wizened as they might look, it was related that they had
in their time fought twenty duels or been loved by ten princesses.
They indeed had been wondrous for others while he was but wondrous
for himself; which, however, was exactly the cause of his haste to
renew the wonder by getting back, as he might put it, into his own
presence. That had quickened his steps and checked his delay. If
his visit was prompt it was because he had been separated so long
from the part of himself that alone he now valued.
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