| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: if he'd a stayed where he was he'd a been a tolerable
sick rat. She said that was first-rate, and she reckoned
I would hive the next one. She went and got the
lump of lead and fetched it back, and brought along a
hank of yarn which she wanted me to help her with.
I held up my two hands and she put the hank over
them, and went on talking about her and her husband's
matters. But she broke off to say:
"Keep your eye on the rats. You better have the
lead in your lap, handy."
So she dropped the lump into my lap just at that
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: Apply thy measure, not to the appearance
Of substances that unto thee seem round,
Thou wilt behold a marvellous agreement,
Of more to greater, and of less to smaller,
In every heaven, with its Intelligence."
Even as remaineth splendid and serene
The hemisphere of air, when Boreas
Is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest,
Because is purified and resolved the rack
That erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs
With all the beauties of its pageantry;
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: exact--a woman whom I had never seen came to my office. She was
in deep mourning and kept her veil down, and she brought for
examination a child, a boy of six. The little fellow was ill; it
looked like typhoid, and the mother was frantic. She wanted a
permit to admit the youngster to the Children's Hospital in town
here, where I am a member of the staff, and I gave her one. The
incident would have escaped me, but for a curious thing. Two
days before Mr. Armstrong was shot, I was sent for to go to the
Country Club: some one had been struck with a golf-ball that had
gone wild. It was late when I left--I was on foot, and
about a mile from the club, on the Claysburg road, I met two
The Circular Staircase |
