| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: wench and the vicar finished by knowing each other's thoughts, but not
those of the mule. When they were both acclimatised, he with her and
she with him, they felt an internal disturbance which resolved itself
into secret desires.
"Ah!" said the vicar, turning round to his companion, "here is a fine
cluster of trees which has grown very thick."
"It is too near the road," replied the girl. "bad boys have cut the
branches, and the cows have eaten the young leaves."
"Are you not married?" asked the vicar, trotting his animal again.
"No," said she.
"Not at all?"
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance
of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had
difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have
been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But
the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death.
His vesture was dabbled in blood--and his broad brow, with all
the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
When the eyes of the Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral
image (which, with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to
sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was
seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: "then I will speak."
"It is my difficulty," she said anxiously.
"Then I will begin by asking 'Why did you except spiritual blessings?'
Is not your mind a part of Nature?"
"Yes, but Free-Will comes in there--I can choose this or that; and God
can influence my choice."
"Then you are not a Fatalist?"
"Oh, no!" she earnestly exclaimed.
"Thank God!" Arthur said to himself, but in so low a whisper that only
I heard it. "You grant then that I can, by an act of free choice,
move this cup," suiting the action to the word, "this way or that way?"
Sylvie and Bruno |
