| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: On the smooth lands went nimbly up and down,
Though full of arms and armed men it was,
Yet with small pains it ran, as it had flown:
Wondered the camp so quick to see it pass,
They praised the workmen and their skill unknown,
And on that day two towers they builded more,
Like that which sweet Clorinda burned before.
XLVI
Yet wholly were not from the Saracines
Their works concealed and their labors hid,
Upon that wall which next the camp confines
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: than thirty thousand. This reconcil'd me to the newspaper accounts
of his having preach'd to twenty-five thousand people in the fields,
and to the antient histories of generals haranguing whole armies,
of which I had sometimes doubted.
By hearing him often, I came to distinguish easily between sermons
newly compos'd, and those which he had often preach'd in the course
of his travels. His delivery of the latter was so improv'd by frequent
repetitions that every accent, every emphasis, every modulation
of voice, was so perfectly well turn'd and well plac'd, that,
without being interested in the subject, one could not help being
pleas'd with the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind with that
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: "I have something better in mind," he said; "come home with me
and finish the evening before my fire."
Bellegarde always welcomed the prospect of a long stretch of conversation,
and before long the two men sat watching the great blaze which scattered
its scintillations over the high adornments of Newman's ball-room.
CHAPTER VIII
"Tell me something about your sister," Newman began abruptly.
Bellegarde turned and gave him a quick look. "Now that I think of it,
you have never yet asked me a question about her."
"I know that very well."
"If it is because you don't trust me, you are very right," said Bellegarde.
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