| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: But all this is lost on Siegfried Bakoonin. "Aha!" he cries, as
the spear is levelled against his breast: "I have found my
father's foe"; and the spear falls in two pieces under the stroke
of Nothung. "Up then," says Wotan: "I cannot withhold you," and
disappears forever from the eye of man. The fires roll down the
mountain; but Siegfried goes at them as exultantly as he went at
the forging of the sword or the heart of the dragon, and
shoulders his way through them, joyously sounding his horn to the
accompaniment of their crackling and seething. And never a hair
of his head is singed. Those frightful flames which have scared
mankind for centuries from the Truth, have not heat enough in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: far behind. There are besides a certain number that look at me
with reproach as I pass them by on my shelves: books that I once
thumbed and studied: houses which were once like home to me, but
where I now rarely visit. I am on these sad terms (and blush to
confess it) with Wordsworth, Horace, Burns and Hazlitt. Last of
all, there is the class of book that has its hour of brilliancy -
glows, sings, charms, and then fades again into insignificance
until the fit return. Chief of those who thus smile and frown on
me by turns, I must name Virgil and Herrick, who, were they but
"Their sometime selves the same throughout the year,"
must have stood in the first company with the six names of my
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: misinterpreted bunch of roses diminished this satisfaction. I should have
been glad to know if the accomplished young woman had further probed that
question and discovered the truth, but it seemed scarce likely that she
could do this without the help of one of three persons, Eliza and myself
who knew all, or John who knew nothing; for the up-country bride, and
whatever other people in Kings Port there were to whom the bride might
gayly recite the tale of my roses, were none of them likely to encounter
Miss Rieppe; their paths and hers would not meet until they met in church
at the wedding of Hortense and John. No, she could not have found out the
truth; for never in the world would she, at this eleventh hour, risk a
conversation with John upon a subject so full of well-packed explosives;
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