| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: He could not read nor write, and did not care to do either; and he
never washed himself, for there was no water up the court where he
lived. He had never been taught to say his prayers. He never had
heard of God, or of Christ, except in words which you never have
heard, and which it would have been well if he had never heard. He
cried half his time, and laughed the other half. He cried when he
had to climb the dark flues, rubbing his poor knees and elbows raw;
and when the soot got into his eyes, which it did every day in the
week; and when his master beat him, which he did every day in the
week; and when he had not enough to eat, which happened every day
in the week likewise. And he laughed the other half of the day,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: While England could a great Republic show.
Witness the men of Piedmont, chiefest care
Of Cromwell, when with impotent despair
The Pontiff in his painted portico
Trembled before our stern ambassadors.
How comes it then that from such high estate
We have thus fallen, save that Luxury
With barren merchandise piles up the gate
Where noble thoughts and deeds should enter by:
Else might we still be Milton's heritors.
Poem: Libertatis Sacra Fames
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: anonymous passions steered between two reef-bound shores. She is as
much afraid of her servants as an Englishwoman who lives in dread of a
trial in the divorce-court. This woman--so free at a ball, so
attractive out walking--is a slave at home; she is never independent
but in perfect privacy, or theoretically. She must preserve herself in
her position as a lady. This is her task.
"For in our day a woman repudiated by her husband, reduced to a meagre
allowance, with no carriage, no luxury, no opera-box, none of the
divine accessories of the toilet, is no longer a wife, a maid, or a
townswoman; she is adrift, and becomes a chattel. The Carmelites will
not receive a married woman; it would be bigamy. Would her lover still
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