| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: until he should be free, with his life in his hand again. She
left the hospital at last, sorrowfully enough, but he made her
go: he fancied the close air was hurting her, seeing at night the
strange shadow growing on her face. I do not think he ever said
to her that he knew all she had done for him, or thanked her; but
no dog or woman that Stephen Holmes loved could look into his
eyes, and doubt that love. Sad, masterful eyes, such as are seen
but once or twice in a lifetime: no woman but would wish, like
Lois, for such eyes to be near her when she came to die, for her
to remember the world's love in. She came hobbling back every
day to see him after she had gone, and would stay to make his
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: him! The cannon had taken an hand in the game. As he shook
his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he
heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and
in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in
the forest beyond.
"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time
they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon
the gun; the smoke will apprise me -- the report arrives too
late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun."
Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round -- spinning
like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: The reasons why the Charmides, Lysis, Laches have been placed together and
first in the series of Platonic dialogues, are: (i) Their shortness and
simplicity. The Charmides and the Lysis, if not the Laches, are of the
same 'quality' as the Phaedrus and Symposium: and it is probable, though
far from certain, that the slighter effort preceded the greater one. (ii)
Their eristic, or rather Socratic character; they belong to the class
called dialogues of search (Greek), which have no conclusion. (iii) The
absence in them of certain favourite notions of Plato, such as the doctrine
of recollection and of the Platonic ideas; the questions, whether virtue
can be taught; whether the virtues are one or many. (iv) They have a want
of depth, when compared with the dialogues of the middle and later period;
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