| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: precious hour of life to be spoil: by anything so indifferent.
That is the worst of being fed enough, and clothed enough,
and warmed enough, and of having everything you can reasonably desire--
on the least provocation you are made uncomfortable and unhappy
by such abstract discomforts as being shut out from a nearer approach
to your neighbour's soul; which is on the face of it foolish,
the probability being that he hasn't got one.
The rockets are all out. The gardener, in a fit of inspiration,
put them right along the very front of two borders, and I don't
know what his feelings can be now that they are all flowering
and the plants behind are completely hidden; but I have learned
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Kenilworth by Walter Scott: and the ultimate motive of life, while he forgot, in the
intoxication of the moment, the perplexities and dangers of his
own situation. Indeed, strange as it may appear, he thought less
at that moment of the perils arising from his secret union, than
of the marks of grace which Elizabeth from time to time showed to
young Raleigh. They were indeed transient, but they were
conferred on one accomplished in mind and body, with grace,
gallantry, literature, and valour. An accident occurred in the
course of the evening which riveted Leicester's attention to this
object.
The nobles and courtiers who had attended the Queen on her
Kenilworth |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: knave Flumen, and if I may cut through above this rock and
make a dyke with a gate in it, to let down the water another
way when the floods come, so shall I spoil him of his craft
and put him to the worse."
Then he toiled day and night to make the dyke, and ever by
night Flumen came and strove with him, and did his power to
cast him down and strangle him. But Martimor stood fast and
drave him back.
And at last, as they wrestled and whapped together, they
fell headlong in the stream.
"Ho-o!" shouted Flumen, "now will I drown thee, and mar
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