| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant
eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white
trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I
can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the
after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into
everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was
an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed
dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could
torture into aught of the sublime. What was it--I paused to
think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: willing to sacrifice his eighty-five-dollar gold watch to the
highest bidder. Just for fun I started off the bidding at two
dollars. The auctioneer at once knocked down the watch to me and
took my money. The speed of it dazed me, and I stumbled along the
street like a fool. What was the game? I held the glittering
watch in my hand and gazed at it like a hypnotized bird. I came
to another pawnshop and went in. "What will you give me on this
watch?" I asked. The pawnbroker glanced at it and said he
couldn't give me anything but advice.
"I can buy these watches for three dollars a dozen. They are
made to be sold at auction. The case is not gold and the works
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: Temperance?
At first he hesitated, and was very unwilling to answer: then he said that
he thought temperance was doing things orderly and quietly, such things for
example as walking in the streets, and talking, or anything else of that
nature. In a word, he said, I should answer that, in my opinion,
temperance is quietness.
Are you right, Charmides? I said. No doubt some would affirm that the
quiet are the temperate; but let us see whether these words have any
meaning; and first tell me whether you would not acknowledge temperance to
be of the class of the noble and good?
Yes.
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