| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: alone, but simple enough to believers--the fact that Alphonzo-Maria di
Liguori, Bishop of Saint-Agatha, administered consolations to Pope
Ganganelli, who saw him, heard him, and answered him, while the Bishop
himself, at a great distance from Rome, was in a trance at home, in
the chair where he commonly sat on his return from Mass. On recovering
consciousness, he saw all his attendants kneeling beside him,
believing him to be dead: "My friends," said he, "the Holy Father is
just dead." Two days later a letter confirmed the news. The hour of
the Pope's death coincided with that when the Bishop had been restored
to his natural state.
Nor had Lambert omitted the yet more recent adventure of an English
 Louis Lambert |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: when evening had come the cloud arose, and there, where the king
had pointed out, stood a splendid palace as white as snow, with
roofs and domes of gold and silver. As the king stood looking and
wondering at this sight, there came five hundred young men
riding, and one in the midst of all who wore a golden crown on
his head, and upon his body a long robe stiff with diamonds and
pearls. "We come," said he, "from the Tailor of Tailors, and
Master of Masters, and One Greater than a King, to ask you to let
him have your daughter for his wife."
"Tell him to come!" cried the king, in admiration, "for the
princess is his."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: So the Daemon went back to the others, who awaited him in their caves,
and said:
"I have failed, for Santa Claus is not at all selfish."
The following day the Daemon of Envy visited Santa Claus. Said he:
"The toy shops are full of playthings quite as pretty as those you are
making. What a shame it is that they should interfere with your
business! They make toys by machinery much quicker than you can make
them by hand; and they sell them for money, while you get nothing at
all for your work."
But Santa Claus refused to be envious of the toy shops.
"I can supply the little ones but once a year--on Christmas Eve," he
 A Kidnapped Santa Claus |