| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions that Maypoles
were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty
feet in height, and straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman
drew.
The Maypole--by which term from henceforth is meant the house, and
not its sign--the Maypole was an old building, with more gable ends
than a lazy man would care to count on a sunny day; huge zig-zag
chimneys, out of which it seemed as though even smoke could not
choose but come in more than naturally fantastic shapes, imparted
to it in its tortuous progress; and vast stables, gloomy, ruinous,
and empty. The place was said to have been built in the days of
Barnaby Rudge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: look upward with adoring gladness. Soft waves of bliss break through us.
"The peace with God." "The sense of sins forgiven." Methodists and
revivalists say the words, and the mocking world shoots out its lip, and
walks by smiling--"Hypocrite."
There are more fools and fewer hypocrites than the wise world dreams of.
The hypocrite is rare as icebergs in the tropics; the fool common as
buttercups beside a water-furrow: whether you go this way or that you
tread on him; you dare not look at your own reflection in the water but you
see one. There is no cant phrase, rotten with age, but it was the dress of
a living body; none but at heart it signifies a real bodily or mental
condition which some have passed through.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: In the body of the sturgeon,
Wait until their meal is ended,
Till their craws are full with feasting,
Till they homeward fly, at sunset,
To their nests among the marshes;
Then bring all your pots and kettles,
And make oil for us in Winter."
And she waited till the sun set,
Till the pallid moon, the Night-sun,
Rose above the tranquil water,
Till Kayoshk, the sated sea-gulls,
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