| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: consider corruptible and perishable things as incorruptible, as
though the enjoyment that cometh from them were co-existent with
us, and immortal as we. Thus then are we deceived; we have taken
no thought concerning the things which are abiding and eternal,
and have laid up in store for ourselves no treasure for that life
beyond, when of a sudden there standeth over us the doom of
death. Then, then at last do those evil and cruel citizens of
darkness, that received us, dispatch us stript of all worldly
goods, -- for all our time has been wasted on their service --
and carry us off `to a dark land and a gloomy, to a land of
eternal darkness, where there is no light, nor can one behold the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest: With work t' do most every day,
Some full o' fun, some bent with care,
Some havin' troubles hard to bear,
I reckon, as I count my woes,
They're 'bout what everybody knows.
The day I find a man who'll say
He's never known a rainy day,
Who'll raise his right hand up an' swear
In forty years he's had no care,
Has never had a single blow,
An' never known one touch o' woe,
Just Folks |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: To think I brought hur to it! And I loved hur so! Oh lad, I
dud!"
The confession, even In this wretch, came with the woman's blush
through the sharp cry.
He did not seem to hear her,--scraping away diligently at the
bars with the bit of tin.
Was he going mad? She peered closely into his face. Something
she saw there made her draw suddenly back,--something which
Haley had not seen, that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it
had caught since the trial, or the curious gray shadow that
rested on it. That gray shadow,--yes, she knew what that meant.
Life in the Iron-Mills |
