| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: garden, which you set yourselves to climb and slide down again, with
"shrieks of delight." When you are past shrieking, having no human
articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of
their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with
cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough
of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrowfullest
spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the deep inner
significance of them, are the English mobs in the valley of
Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing rusty howitzers; and the
Swiss vintagers of Zurich expressing their Christian thanks for the
gift of the vine, by assembling in knots in the "towers of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: existed; had sprung into being with her first penetrating question
to him in the autumn light there at Weatherend. The real form it
should have taken on the basis that stood out large was the form of
their marrying. But the devil in this was that the very basis
itself put marrying out of the question. His conviction, his
apprehension, his obsession, in short, wasn't a privilege he could
invite a woman to share; and that consequence of it was precisely
what was the matter with him. Something or other lay in wait for
him, amid the twists and the turns of the months and the years,
like a crouching Beast in the Jungle. It signified little whether
the crouching Beast were destined to slay him or to be slain. The
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: Now it is supper-time in Orleans:
Here, through this grate, I count each one,
And view the Frenchmen how they fortify:
Let us look in; the sight will much delight thee.
Sir Thomas Gargrave and Sir William Glansdale,
Let me have your express opinions
Where is best place to make our battery next.
GARGRAVE.
I think, at the north gate; for there stand lords.
GLANSDALE.
And I, here, at the bulwark of the bridge.
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