| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: I wish you would come to Sunnyside and spend a few days there.
The ghost is not laid. I want you to spend one night at least
watching the circular staircase. The murder of Arnold Armstrong
was a beginning, not an end."
He looked serious.
"Perhaps I can do it," he said. "I have been doing something
else, but--well, I will come out to-night."
We were very silent during the trip back to Sunnyside. I watched
Gertrude closely and somewhat sadly. To me there was one glaring
flaw in her story, and it seemed to stand out for every one to
see. Arnold Armstrong had had no key, and yet she said she had
The Circular Staircase |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: When he had Peter he needed nothing else. In some curious process
of his childish mind Peter and Daddy mingled in inextricable
confusion. More than once he had recalled events in the roving
life he and his father had led.
"You remember that, don't you?" he would say.
"Certainly I remember," Peter would reply heartily.
"That evening on the steamer when I ate so many raisins."
"Of course. And were ill."
"Not ill--not that time. But you said I'd make a good pudding!
You remember that, don't you?"
And Peter would recall it all.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: sometimes the mind (or soul) itself is the sole instrument by which we
register our pains and pleasures; whilst at other times such pains and
pleasures are derived conjointly through both soul and body.[10] There
are some pleasures, further, if I may trust my own sensations, which
are conveyed in sleep, though how and by what means and when
precisely, are matters as to which I am still more conscious of my
ignorance. Nor is it to be wondered at perhaps, if the perceptions of
waking life in some way strike more clearly on our senses than do
those of sleep.[11]
[7] Or, "if I may trust my powers of observation I would say that
common men are capable of pains and pleasures conveyed through
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