| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: family and the infants found dead by them, merely for want; and, if I
may speak my opinion, I do believe that many hundreds of poor
helpless infants perished in this manner. Secondly, not starved, but
poisoned by the nurse. Nay, even where the mother has been nurse,
and having received the infection, has poisoned, that is, infected the
infant with her milk even before they knew they were infected
themselves; nay, and the infant has died in such a case before the
mother. I cannot but remember to leave this admonition upon record,
if ever such another dreadful visitation should happen in this city, that
all women that are with child or that give suck should be gone, if they
have any possible means, out of the place, because their misery, if
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: And loose the arched cord; aye, even now upon the quest
I hear her hurrying feet, - awake, awake,
Thou laggard in love's battle! once at least
Let me drink deep of passion's wine, and slake
My parched being with the nectarous feast
Which even gods affect! O come, Love, come,
Still we have time to reach the cavern of thine azure home.'
Scarce had she spoken when the shuddering trees
Shook, and the leaves divided, and the air
Grew conscious of a god, and the grey seas
Crawled backward, and a long and dismal blare
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: all; they wondered how old Castanier had come by it; and now they
beheld Castanier divested of his power, shrunken, wrinkled, aged, and
feeble. He had drawn Claparon out of the crowd with the energy of a
sick man in a fever fit; he had looked like an opium-eater during the
brief period of excitement that the drug can give; now, on his return,
he seemed to be in the condition of utter exhaustion in which the
patient dies after the fever departs, or to be suffering from the
horrible prostration that follows on excessive indulgence in the
delights of narcotics. The infernal power that had upheld him through
his debauches had left him, and the body was left unaided and alone to
endure the agony of remorse and the heavy burden of sincere
|
