| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: optimism, can hardly be regarded by any thinking man as a serious
solution. Phrases of neatness, cosiness, and comfort can never
be an answer to the sphinx's riddle.
In these remarks I am leaning only upon mankind's common instinct
for reality, which in point of fact has always held the world to
be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel,
life's supreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no
capacity whatever for it in any direction. On the other hand, no
matter what a man's frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing
to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the
service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: of the public in regard to this class of
performance: ``Electricity is a mysterious agent;
therefore everything mysterious is electric.''
Of the performance of the Electric Girl this
magazine says:
It is a question of a simple application
of the elementary principles of the laws
of mechanics, chapter of equilibrium.
We propose to point out here a certain
number of such artifices and to describe
a few of the experiments, utilizing for this
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: point without trouble and disorder not lightly to be put on or off.
Yet I did not hurry to his relief, I was still possessed by a vague
feeling of offense. I reflected that any mother would be, and I
quite plumed myself upon my annoyance. It was so satisfactory, when
one had a daughter, to know the sensations of even any mother. Nor
was it soothing to remember that the young man's whole attitude
towards Cecily had been based upon criticism of me, even though he
sat before me whipped with his own lash. His temerity had been
stupid and obstinate; I could not regret his punishment.
I kept him waiting long enough to think all this, and then I
replied, 'I have not the least means of knowing.'
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