| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Aesop's Fables by Aesop: A Fox was boasting to a Cat of its clever devices for escaping
its enemies. "I have a whole bag of tricks," he said, "which
contains a hundred ways of escaping my enemies."
"I have only one," said the Cat; "but I can generally manage
with that." Just at that moment they heard the cry of a pack of
hounds coming towards them, and the Cat immediately scampered up a
tree and hid herself in the boughs. "This is my plan," said the
Cat. "What are you going to do?" The Fox thought first of one
way, then of another, and while he was debating the hounds came
nearer and nearer, and at last the Fox in his confusion was caught
up by the hounds and soon killed by the huntsmen. Miss Puss, who
Aesop's Fables |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: ever have been built if he had not run the people mad, a couple
of generations ago, with his medieval romances. The South has
not yet recovered from the debilitating influence of his books.
Admiration of his fantastic heroes and their grotesque
'chivalry' doings and romantic juvenilities still survives here,
in an atmosphere in which is already perceptible the wholesome
and practical nineteenth-century smell of cotton-factories
and locomotives; and traces of its inflated language and other
windy humbuggeries survive along with it. It is pathetic enough,
that a whitewashed castle, with turrets and things--materials all
ungenuine within and without, pretending to be what they are not--
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates: whether I dared strike a match. Fearing that there might be a
fireman somewhere in the darkness, I abandoned the idea. The
sudden flash might be seen, and then people would come running,
and there would have to be explanations. I went down on my hands
and knees, and felt round her chair and then mine, and then all
over the box. Just as I got up, my right hand encountered
something hard and shiny. Clearly it wasn't what I was looking
for, but out of curiosity I stooped to feel it again. I groped
in vain for a moment; then I put my hand full on the buckle of a
patent-leather shoe. As my fingers closed about a warm ankle:
"Pardon, monsieur!" came a quick whisper.
The Brother of Daphne |
