| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: full of high spirits, each practised something of the same
repression: no sharp word was uttered in their house. The same
point of honour ruled them, a guest was sacred and stood within the
pale from criticism. It was a house, besides, of unusual
intellectual tension. Mrs. Austin remembered, in the early days of
the marriage, the three brothers, John, Charles, and Alfred,
marching to and fro, each with his hands behind his back, and
'reasoning high' till morning; and how, like Dr. Johnson, they
would cheer their speculations with as many as fifteen cups of tea.
And though, before the date of Fleeming's visit, the brothers were
separated, Charles long ago retired from the world at Brandeston,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: The first thing he did on finding himself alone in the fast
falling night was to tiptoe to Slightly's tree, and make sure
that it provided him with a passage. Then for long he remained
brooding; his hat of ill omen on the sward, so that any gentle
breeze which had arisen might play refreshingly through his hair.
Dark as were his thoughts his blue eyes were as soft as the
periwinkle. Intently he listened for any sound from the nether
world, but all was as silent below as above; the house under the
ground seemed to be but one more empty tenement in the void. Was
that boy asleep, or did he stand waiting at the foot of
Slightly's tree, with his dagger in his hand?
Peter Pan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: And in another garden play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is still on his play-business bent.
He does not hear, he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away;
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.
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