| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: quit me?" she asked. "I came to tell you that
I'm willing to do as you asked me. But it's no
use talking about that now. Give me my things,
please." She put her hand out toward the fender.
Alexander sat down on the arm of her chair.
"Did you think I had forgotten you were
in town, Hilda? Do you think I kept away by accident?
Did you suppose I didn't know you were sailing on Tuesday?
There is a letter for you there, in my desk drawer.
It was to have reached you on the steamer. I was
all the morning writing it. I told myself that
Alexander's Bridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: two hundred years since, two bad women, being with child, fled
thither to hide themselves; to whom certain lewd fellows resorted,
and this was their first original. They are a peculiar of their
own making, exempt from bishop, archdeacon, and all authority,
either ecclesiastical or civil. They live in cots (rather holes
than houses) like swine, having all in common, multiplied without
marriage into many hundreds. Their language is the dross of the
dregs of the vulgar Devonian; and the more learned a man is, the
worse he can understand them. During our civil wars no soldiers
were quartered upon them, for fear of being quartered amongst them.
Their wealth consisteth in other men's goods; they live by stealing
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Thus is the door of doom, O nowise barred
Against the sky, against the sun and earth
And deep-sea waters, but wide open stands
And gloats upon them, monstrous and agape.
Wherefore, again, 'tis needful to confess
That these same things are born in time; for things
Which are of mortal body could indeed
Never from infinite past until to-day
Have spurned the multitudinous assaults
Of the immeasurable aeons old.
Again, since battle so fiercely one with other
Of The Nature of Things |
