| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: might love another man--and if I did love him--no matter what I had felt or
done before, I would be worthy. I could feel worthy. I could give him just
as much. But without such love I'd give only a husk--a body without soul."
Love, then, was the sacred and holy flame of life that sanctioned the
begetting of children. Marriage might be a necessity of modern time, but it
was not the vital issue. Carley's anguish revealed strange and hidden
truths. In some inexplicable way Nature struck a terrible balance--revenged
herself upon a people who had no children, or who brought into the world
children not created by the divinity of love, unyearned for, and therefore
somehow doomed to carry on the blunders and burdens of life.
Carley realized how right and true it might be for her to throw herself
The Call of the Canyon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: him the compliment of a visit. Young Hay of Romanes rode down to call,
on his crop-eared pony; young Pringle of Drumanno came up on his bony
grey. Hay remained on the hospitable field, and must be carried to bed;
Pringle got somehow to his saddle about 3 A.M., and (as Archie stood
with the lamp on the upper doorstep) lurched, uttered a senseless view-
holloa, and vanished out of the small circle of illumination like a
wraith. Yet a minute or two longer the clatter of his break-neck flight
was audible, then it was cut off by the intervening steepness of the
hill; and again, a great while after, the renewed beating of phantom
horse-hoofs, far in the valley of the Hermiston, showed that the horse
at least, if not his rider, was still on the homeward way.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . .
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . .
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . .
|
