| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: days, spoke no more of her promise to consult her husband as to the
best way of tracing Mrs. Hochmuller; and dread of fresh
disappointment kept Ann Eliza from bringing up the subject.
But the following Sunday evening, as she sat for the first
time bolstered up in her rocking-chair near the stove, while Miss
Mellins studied the Police Gazette beneath the lamp, there
came a knock on the shop-door and Mr. Hawkins entered.
Ann Eliza's first glance at his plain friendly face showed her
he had news to give, but though she no longer attempted to hide her
anxiety from Miss Mellins, her lips trembled too much to let her
speak.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: and said another. Is the scribe, for example, to be regarded as doing
nothing when he reads or writes?
I should rather think that he was doing something.
And does the scribe write or read, or teach you boys to write or read, your
own names only, or did you write your enemies' names as well as your own
and your friends'?
As much one as the other.
And was there anything meddling or intemperate in this?
Certainly not.
And yet if reading and writing are the same as doing, you were doing what
was not your own business?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: life, albeit on the continent of Europe there are many convents
magnificently adapted to the purpose of their existence. Buried
away in the loneliest valleys, hanging in mid-air on the steepest
mountainsides, set down on the brink of precipices, in every
place man has sought for the poetry of the Infinite, the solemn
awe of Silence; in every place man has striven to draw closer to
God, seeking Him on mountain peaks, in the depths below the
crags, at the cliff's edge; and everywhere man has found God.
But nowhere, save on this half-European, half-African ledge of
rock could you find so many different harmonies, combining so to
raise the soul, that the sharpest pain comes to be like other
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