| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Let me speak, my child, and let me answer your questions.
"'Tis for your sake alone I have come,--why seek to conceal it?
For I happily live with two affectionate parents,
Whom I faithfully help to look after our house and possessions,
Being an only son, while numerous are our employments.
I look after the field work; the house is carefully managed
By my father; my mother the hostelry cheers and enlivens.
But you also have doubtless found out how greatly the servants,
Sometimes by fraud, and sometimes by levity, worry their mistress,
Constantly making her change them, and barter one fault for another.
Long has my mother, therefore, been wanting a girl in the household,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: "What the devil could that handkerchief signify?"
Placed where he was, D'Artagnan could not perceive the face of
Aramis. We say Aramis, because the young man entertained no
doubt that it was his friend who held this dialogue from the
interior with the lady of the exterior. Curiosity prevailed over
prudence; and profiting by the preoccupation into which the sight
of the handkerchief appeared to have plunged the two personages
now on the scene, he stole from his hiding place, and quick as
lightning, but stepping with utmost caution, he ran and placed
himself close to the angle of the wall, from which his eye could
pierce the interior of Aramis's room.
The Three Musketeers |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: the village--the field wherein Jude had received a thrashing
from the farmer many years earlier. On ascending to the village
and approaching the house they found Mrs. Edlin standing at
the door, who at sight of them lifted her hands deprecatingly.
"She's downstairs, if you'll believe me!" cried the widow. "Out o'
bed she got, and nothing could turn her. What will come o't I do
not know!"
On entering, there indeed by the fireplace sat the old woman,
wrapped in blankets, and turning upon them a countenance
like that of Sebastiano's Lazarus. They must have looked
their amazement, for she said in a hollow voice:
Jude the Obscure |
