| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his
experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his
puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of
crime as were demanded for his study.
Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the
moment that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of
improvement with his intellect. And now, as his highest effort
and inevitable development,--as the bright and gorgeous flower,
and rich, delicious fruit of his life's labor,--he had produced
the Unpardonable Sin!
"What more have I to seek? what more to achieve?" said Ethan
The Snow Image |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: battle, his attitude a challenge. He sees his enemy: horsemen
sitting motionless, with long spears in rest, upon blindfolded
broken-down nags, lean and starved, fit only for sport and
sacrifice, then the carrion-heap.
"The bull makes a rush, with murder in his eye, but a picador meets
him with a spear-thrust in the shoulder. He flinches with the
pain, and the picador skips out of danger. A burst of applause for
the picador, hisses for the bull. Some shout 'Cow!' at the bull,
and call him offensive names. But he is not listening to them, he
is there for business; he is not minding the cloak-bearers that
come fluttering around to confuse him; he chases this way, he
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: Walkurie and her hero feast together at one board, in a brave fellowship.
Always in our dreams we hear the turn of the key that shall close the door
of the last brothel; the clink of the last coin that pays for the body and
soul of a woman; the falling of the last wall that encloses artificially
the activity of woman and divides her from man; always we picture the love
of the sexes, as, once a dull, slow, creeping worm; then a torpid, earthy
chrysalis; at last the full-winged insect, glorious in the sunshine of the
future.
Today, as we row hard against the stream of life, is it only a blindness in
our eyes, which have been too long strained, which makes us see, far up the
river where it fades into the distance, through all the mists that rise
|
