| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: it seemed unhealthily obese; its skin showed bare patches of an
unpleasant character. However, they had not killed that dog for
the sake of the pelt. He was large. . .He was eaten. . .The rest
is silence. . .
A silence in which a small boy shudders and says firmly:
"I could not have eaten that dog."
And his grandmother remarks with a smile:
"Perhaps you don't know what it is to be hungry."
I have learned something of it since. Not that I have been
reduced to eat dog. I have fed on the emblematical animal,
which, in the language of the volatile Gauls, is called la vache
Some Reminiscences |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: Nor faith, that up some sunward slope
Runs aureoled to meet its lord;
It touches something elder far
Than faith or creed or thought in man,
It was ere yet these lived and ran
Like light from star to star;
It touches that stark, primal need
That from unpeopled voids and vast
Fashioned the first crude, childish creed,--
And still shall fashion, till the last!
For one word is the tale of men:
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: life to keep her up,--some love or hope, it might be, or urgent
need. When that stimulant was gone, she would take to whiskey.
Man cannot live by work alone. While she was skinning the
potatoes, and munching them, a noise behind her made her stop.
"Janey!" she called, lifting the candle and peering into the
darkness. "Janey, are you there?"
A heap of ragged coats was heaved up, and the face of a
young,girl emerged, staring sleepily at the woman.
"Deborah," she said, at last, "I'm here the night."
"Yes, child. Hur's welcome," she said, quietly eating on.
The girl's face was haggard and sickly; her eyes were heavy with
Life in the Iron-Mills |
