| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: Every time the door opens her eyes brighten, and she thinks you
are going to come in; then, when she sees that it is not you, her
face resumes its sorrowful expression, a cold sweat breaks out
over it, and her cheek-bones flush.
February 19, midnight.
What a sad day we have had to-day, poor M. Armand! This morning
Marguerite was stifling; the doctor bled her, and her voice has
returned to her a while. The doctor begged her to see a priest.
She said "Yes," and he went himself to fetch an abbe' from Saint
Roch.
Meanwhile Marguerite called me up to her bed, asked me to open a
 Camille |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: I shudder at an open knife;
The perilous seas I still avoided
And stuck to land whate'er betided.
I had no gold, no marble quarry,
I was a poor apothecary,
Yet here I stand, at thirty-eight,
A man of an assured estate.'
'Well,' answered Robin - 'well, and how?'
The smiling chemist tapped his brow.
'Rob,' he replied, 'this throbbing brain
Still worked and hankered after gain.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: at first, and then vastly wearied him.
The machinery was always pounding away in this man,
and Wilson preferred companions of a more reflective
habit of mind. He could not help feeling that
there were unreasoning and unreasonable
activities going on in Alexander all the while;
that even after dinner, when most men
achieve a decent impersonality, Bartley had
merely closed the door of the engine-room
and come up for an airing. The machinery
itself was still pounding on.
 Alexander's Bridge |