| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: opened? It waits at the doors of your houses--it waits at the
corners of your streets; we are in the midst of judgment--the
insects that we crush are our judges--the moments we fret away are
our judges--the elements that feed us, judge, as they minister--and
the pleasures that deceive us, judge, as they indulge. Let us, for
our lives, do the work of Men while we bear the form of them, if
indeed those lives are NOT as a vapour, and do NOT vanish away.
"The work of men"--and what is that? Well, we may any of us know
very quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it. But
many of us are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do,
but of what we are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: took almost opposite courses.
Joe wondered if they had headed off the Indians. Certainly they had run fast
enough. He was wet with perspiration. He glanced at Wetzel, who was standing
near. The man's broad breast rose and fell a little faster; that was the only
evidence of exertion. The lad had a painful feeling that he could never keep
pace with the hunter, if this five-mile run was a sample of the speed he would
be forced to maintain.
"They've got ahead of us, but which crick did they take?" queried Wetzel, as
though debating the question with himself.
"How do you know they've passed?"
"We circled," answered Wetzel, as he shook his head and pointed into the
The Spirit of the Border |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: At the foot of the hills of Jarvis lies a village of some two hundred
wooden houses, where an isolated population lives like a swarm of bees
in a forest, without increasing or diminishing; vegetating happily,
while wringing their means of living from the breast of a stern
Nature. The almost unknown existence of the little hamlet is readily
accounted for. Few of its inhabitants were bold enough to risk their
lives among the reefs to reach the deep-sea fishing,--the staple
industry of Norwegians on the least dangerous portions of their coast.
The fish of the fiord were numerous enough to suffice, in part at
least, for the sustenance of the inhabitants; the valley pastures
provided milk and butter; a certain amount of fruitful, well-tilled
Seraphita |
