| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: trembling joy, the Son of God, to whose name be glory, on this
His birthday, and forever and forever."
The soul of Hermas did not answer to the musician's touch.
The strings of his heart were slack and soundless; there was
no response within him. He was neither shepherd, nor king,
nor wise man; only an unhappy, dissatisfied, questioning
youth. He was out of sympathy with the eager preacher,
the joyous hearers. In their harmony he had no part. Was it
for this that he had forsaken his inheritance and narrowed his
life to poverty and hardship? What was it all worth?
The gracious prayers with which the young converts were
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: privations, the greater should be our cheerfulness to endure the
latter, and our vigour to contend against the former.
Mary did not lament, but she brooded continually over the
misfortune, and sank into a state of dejection from which no effort
of mine could rouse her. I could not possibly bring her to regard
the matter on its bright side as I did: and indeed I was so
fearful of being charged with childish frivolity, or stupid
insensibility, that I carefully kept most of my bright ideas and
cheering notions to myself; well knowing they could not be
appreciated.
My mother thought only of consoling my father, and paying our debts
Agnes Grey |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: "Are you pretty middling? I have just been experimenting on treacle,
but it would take a man like your father to find what I am looking
for. Ah! he was a famous chemist, he was! If I had only known his gout
specific, you and I should be rolling along in our carriage this day."
The little druggist, whose head was as thick as his heart was kind,
never let a week pass without some allusion to Chardon senior's
unlucky secretiveness as to that discovery, words that Lucien felt
like a stab.
"It is a great pity," Lucien answered curtly. He was beginning to
think his father's apprentice prodigiously vulgar, though he had
blessed the man for his kindness, for honest Postel had helped his
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