| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: "lest they should be weary."
A sign from the abbess; a chanted benediction; a murmuring
of sweet voices and a soft rustling of many feet over the
rushes on the floor; the gentle tide of noise flowed out
through the doors and ebbed away down the corridors; the three
at the head of the table were left alone in the darkening
room.
Then Winfried began to translate the parable of the
soldier into the realities of life.
At every turn he knew how to flash a new light into the
picture out of his own experience. He spoke of the combat
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: but he cared little for adulation; and he waited at foreign
watering-places and in Algiers until the fame of his exploits had
run through its nine days' vitality and begun to be forgotten. He
arrived in London at last, in the early season, with as little
observation as he could desire; and as he was an orphan and had
none but distant relatives who lived in the provinces, it was
almost as a foreigner that he installed himself in the capital of
the country for which he had shed his blood.
On the day following his arrival he dined alone at a military club.
He shook hands with a few old comrades, and received their warm
congratulations; but as one and all had some engagement for the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: "What can I do?" I said to her. "One cannot fight single-handed,
and I have never experienced such loneliness as I do now. I would
give a great deal to find one man in the whole province on whom I
could rely."
"Invite Ivan Ivanitch," said Marya Gerasimovna.
"To be sure!" I thought, delighted. "That is an idea! _C'est
raison_," I hummed, going to my study to write to Ivan Ivanitch.
"_C'est raison, c'est raison_."
II
Of all the mass of acquaintances who, in this house twenty-five
to thirty-five years ago, had eaten, drunk, masqueraded, fallen
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