| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: of the present and of the future. In 1831, he told me exactly what
would and did happen--the murders, the conspiracies, the ascendency of
the Jews, the difficulty of doing anything in France, the scarcity of
talent in the higher circles, and the abundance of intellect in the
lowest ranks, where the finest courage is smothered under cigar ashes.
What was to become of him? His parents wished him to be a doctor. But
if he were a doctor, must he not wait twenty years for a practice? You
know what he did? No? Well, he is a doctor; but he left France, he is
in Asia. At this moment he is perhaps sinking under fatigue in a
desert, or dying of the lashes of a barbarous horde--or perhaps he is
some Indian prince's prime minister.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: also with passengers from London, for another packet-boat
that was going off for Holland, which coaches were to go back
next day with the passengers that were just landed. In this
hurry it was not much minded that I came to the bar and paid
my reckoning, telling my landlady I had gotten my passage by
sea in a wherry.
These wherries are large vessels, with good accommodation
for carrying passengers from Harwich to London; and though
they are called wherries, which is a word used in the Thames
for a small boat rowed with one or two men, yet these are
vessels able to carry twenty passengers, and ten or fifteen tons
Moll Flanders |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Of self at a traitor's feet, I wandered
Weeks and weeks in a baffled frenzy,
Till at last the devil spoke. I heard him,
And laughed at the love that strove to touch me, --
The dead, lost love; and I gripped the demon
Close to my breast, and held him, praising
The fates and the furies that gave me the courage
To follow his wild command. Forgetful
Of all to come when the work was over, --
There came to me then no stony vision
Of these three hundred days, -- I cherished
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