| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'Ay,' said Gotthold, 'or else stay where he is. What gnat has
bitten you to-day? Do you not know that you are touching, with lay
hands, the very holiest inwards of philosophy, where madness dwells?
Ay, Otto, madness; for in the serene temples of the wise, the inmost
shrine, which we carefully keep locked, is full of spiders' webs.
All men, all, are fundamentally useless; nature tolerates, she does
not need, she does not use them: sterile flowers! All - down to the
fellow swinking in a byre, whom fools point out for the exception -
all are useless; all weave ropes of sand; or like a child that has
breathed on a window, write and obliterate, write and obliterate,
idle words! Talk of it no more. That way, I tell you, madness
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: PRISM bows her head in shame.] Come here, Prism! [MISS PRISM
approaches in a humble manner.] Prism! Where is that baby?
[General consternation. The CANON starts back in horror. ALGERNON
and JACK pretend to be anxious to shield CECILY and GWENDOLEN from
hearing the details of a terrible public scandal.] Twenty-eight
years ago, Prism, you left Lord Bracknell's house, Number 104,
Upper Grosvenor Street, in charge of a perambulator that contained
a baby of the male sex. You never returned. A few weeks later,
through the elaborate investigations of the Metropolitan police,
the perambulator was discovered at midnight, standing by itself in
a remote corner of Bayswater. It contained the manuscript of a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: it again, ran through in my mind all possible German names, and
found that it could only be "Johann,"--and in the same instant I
recalled the frequent habit of the Prussian and Polish nobility of
calling their German valets by French names. This, then, was
"Jean!" The address was certainly "Baron," and why thrice
underscored, unless in contemptuous satire? Light began to break
upon the matter at last. "Otto" had been playing the part, perhaps
assuming the name, of a nobleman, seduced to the deception by his
passion for the Countess' sister, Helmine. This explained the
reference to "the papers," and "the secret," and would account for
the respectful and sympathetic tone of the Countess' letter. But
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