| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: look the alternative all over, which are worth the price of a
pound of tobacco to a man of limited means. This is a
sobering reflection for the proudest of our earthly vanities.
Even a tobacconist may, upon consideration, find no great
cause for personal vainglory in the phrase; for although
tobacco is an admirable sedative, the qualities necessary for
retailing it are neither rare nor precious in themselves.
Alas and alas! you may take it how you will, but the services
of no single individual are indispensable. Atlas was just a
gentleman with a protracted nightmare! And yet you see
merchants who go and labour themselves into a great fortune
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: caught sight of two bright eyes staring out of a corner. Thinking it
was a wild cat, or some such animal, I redoubled my haste, when suddenly
a voice near the eyes began first to mutter, and then to send up a
succession of awful yells.
"Hastily I lit another match, and perceived that the eyes belonged to an
old woman, wrapped up in a greasy leather garment. Taking her by the
arm, I dragged her out, for she could not, or would not, come by
herself, and the stench was overpowering me. Such a sight as she was--a
bag of bones, covered over with black, shrivelled parchment. The only
white thing about her was her wool, and she seemed to be pretty well
dead except for her eyes and her voice. She thought that I was a devil
Long Odds |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: That I no more can see what once I was!
'O time, cease thou thy course and last no longer,
If they surcease to be that should survive.
Shall rotten death make conquest of the stronger,
And leave the faltering feeble souls alive?
The old bees die, the young possess their hive:
Then live, sweet Lucrece, live again, and see
Thy father die, and not thy father thee!'
By this starts Collatine as from a dream,
And bids Lucretius give his sorrow place;
And then in key-cold Lucrece' bleeding stream
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