| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: overpowering me. I was thankful to come out, safe and sound,
into the open air. People stared at me as I walked along the
street, and one man said I was drunk. I was staggering about
from one side of the pavement to the other, and it was as much
as I could do to take the key back to the agent and get home. I
was in bed for a week, suffering from what my doctor called
nervous shock and exhaustion. One of those days I was reading
the evening paper, and happened to notice a paragraph headed:
'Starved to Death.' It was the usual style of thing; a model
lodging-house in Marlyebone, a door locked for several days, and
a dead man in his chair when they broke in. 'The deceased,'said
The Great God Pan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Richard III by William Shakespeare: THIRD MESSENGER. The news I have to tell your Majesty
Is that by sudden floods and fall of waters
Buckingham's army is dispers'd and scatter'd;
And he himself wand'red away alone,
No man knows whither.
KING RICHARD. I cry thee mercy.
There is my purse to cure that blow of thine.
Hath any well-advised friend proclaim'd
Reward to him that brings the traitor in?
THIRD MESSENGER. Such proclamation hath been made,
my Lord.
Richard III |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: cries and lamentations at the hardship of his case. But there was no
remedy; self-preservation obliged the people to those severities which
they would not otherwise have been concerned in. Whether this poor
man lived or died I cannot tell, but it was reported that he had the
plague upon him at that time; and perhaps the people might report that
to justify their usage of him; but it was not unlikely that either he or
his goods, or both, were dangerous, when his whole family had been
dead of the distempers so little a while before.
I know that the inhabitants of the towns adjacent to London were
much blamed for cruelty to the poor people that ran from the
contagion in their distress, and many very severe things were done, as
A Journal of the Plague Year |
