| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round -- spinning
like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now
distant bridge, fort and men, all were commingled and
blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only;
circular horizontal streaks of color -- that was all he saw.
He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with
a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and
sick. In few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the
foot of the left bank of the stream -- the southern bank --
and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his
enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And where there is insolence and injustice and cowardice, is not
chastisement the art which is most required?
THEAETETUS: That certainly appears to be the opinion of mankind.
STRANGER: Again, of the various kinds of ignorance, may not instruction be
rightly said to be the remedy?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And of the art of instruction, shall we say that there is one or
many kinds? At any rate there are two principal ones. Think.
THEAETETUS: I will.
STRANGER: I believe that I can see how we shall soonest arrive at the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: Hulot should go to invite Stidmann, Claude Vignon, and Steinbock to
dinner; for she was beginning to tyrannize over him as women of that
type tyrannize over old men, who trot round town, and go to make
interest with every one who is necessary to the interests or the
vanity of their task-mistress.
Next evening Valerie armed herself for conquest by making such a
toilet as a Frenchwoman can devise when she wishes to make the most of
herself. She studied her appearance in this great work as a man going
out to fight a duel practises his feints and lunges. Not a speck, not
a wrinkle was to be seen. Valerie was at her whitest, her softest, her
sweetest. And certain little "patches" attracted the eye.
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