| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: would be found to be like that of our own sun. Observation daily
enhances this probability, for our study of the sidereal universe
is continually showing us stars in all stages of development. We
find irregular nebulae, for example; we find spiral and
spheroidal nebulae; we find stars which have got beyond the
nebulous stage, but are still at a whiter heat than our sun; and
we also find many stars which yield the same sort of spectrum as
our sun. The inference seems forced upon us that the same process
of concentration which has gone on in the case of our solar
nebula has been going on in the case of other nebulae. The
history of the sun is but a type of the history of stars in
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: which develops in all its grace only on Savonnerie carpets, beneath
the opal gleams of an alabaster lamp, between guarded walls silk-hung,
before gilded hearths in chambers deadened to all outward sounds by
shutters and billowy curtains. Mirrors must be there to show the play
of form and repeat the woman we would multiply as love itself
multiplies and magnifies her; next low divans, and a bed which, like a
secret, is divined, not shown. In this coquettish chamber are fur-
lined slippers for pretty feet, wax-candles under glass with muslin
draperies, by which to read at all hours of the night, and flowers,
not those oppressive to the head, and linen, the fineness of which
might have satisfied Anne of Austria.
Ferragus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: of the lesser council of confirmation of three hundred lords and
princes, who sat without the circle but in hearing of all that
passed. Very solemn also was the prayer of the high priest, who,
clad in his robes of sable, seemed like a blot of ink dropped on a
glitter of gold. Thus he prayed:
'O god, thou who art everywhere and seest all, knowest that
Cuitlahua our king is gathered to thee. Thou hast set him beneath
thy footstool and there he rests in his rest. He has travelled
that road which we must travel every one, he has reached the royal
inhabitations of our dead, the home of everlasting shadows. There
where none shall trouble him he is sunk in sleep. His brief
Montezuma's Daughter |
