| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: In such a bottom: `Peter had the brush,
My Peter, first:' and did Sir Aylmer know
That great pock-pitten fellow had been caught?
Then made his pleasure echo, hand to hand,
And rolling as it were the substance of it
Between his palms a moment up and down--
`The birds were warm, the birds were warm upon him;
We have him now:' and had Sir Aylmer heard--
Nay, but he must--the land was ringing of it--
This blacksmith-border marriage--one they knew--
Raw from the nursery--who could trust a child?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: they were, "Who knows? We are scattered all over the steppes; wherever
there is a hillock, there is a Cossack."
It was, in fact, a most remarkable exhibition of Russian strength,
forced by dire necessity from the bosom of the people. In place of the
original provinces with their petty towns, in place of the warring and
bartering petty princes ruling in their cities, there arose great
colonies, kurens[3], and districts, bound together by one common
danger and hatred against the heathen robbers. The story is well known
how their incessant warfare and restless existence saved Europe from
the merciless hordes which threatened to overwhelm her. The Polish
kings, who now found themselves sovereigns, in place of the provincial
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: necessary to a household which, without his devotion to its interests,
would infallibly have gone to ruin. What fortune can bear the strain
of reckless prodigality? Clementine, brought up by a spendthrift
father, knew nothing of the management of a household which the women
of the present day, however rich or noble they are, are often
compelled to undertake themselves. How few, in these days, keep a
steward. Adam, on the other hand, son of one of the great Polish lords
who let themselves be preyed on by the Jews, and are wholly incapable
of managing even the wreck of their vast fortunes (for fortunes are
vast in Poland), was not of a nature to check his own fancies or those
of his wife. Left to himself he would probably have been ruined before
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