| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: with me as much as with the others. At nightfall, during a stop
at a large station, the gentleman with the fine baggage--a
lawyer, as I have since learned--got out with his companion to
drink some tea at the restaurant. During their absence several
new travellers entered the car, among whom was a tall old man,
shaven and wrinkled, evidently a merchant, wearing a large
heavily-lined cloak and a big cap. This merchant sat down
opposite the empty seats of the lawyer and his companion, and
straightway entered into conversation with a young man who seemed
like an employee in some commercial house, and who had likewise
just boarded the train. At first the clerk had remarked that the
The Kreutzer Sonata |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: before had been occupied by a family that had been murdered or
driven off by a roving band of outlaws. A rude corral showed
dimly in the edge of firelight, and from a black mass within came
the snort and stamp and whinney of horses.
Gale took in the scene in one quick glance, then sank down at the
foot of the mesquite. He had naturally expected to see more men.
but the situation was by no means new. This was one, or part of
one, of the raider bands harrying the border. They were stealing
horses, or driving a herd already stolen. These bands were more
numerous than the waterholes of northern Sonora; they never camped
long at one place; like Arabs, they roamed over the desert all the
Desert Gold |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: Emperor Kuang Hsu. She has always been called the Young Empress,
but is now the Empress Dowager. After the great Dowager was made
the concubine of Hsien Feng, she succeeded in arranging a
marriage, as we have seen, between her younger sister and the
younger brother of her husband, the Seventh Prince, as he was
called, father of Kuang Hsu and the present regent.
The world knows how, in order to keep the succession in her own
family, she took the son of this younger sister, when her own son
the Emperor Tung Chih died, and made him the Emperor Kuang Hsu
when he was but little more than three years of age. When the
time came for him to wed, she arranged that he should marry his
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