| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: fields of air where, round about Paradise, the bodies of light are in
closer array, where the azure is easy to pass through, where worlds
innumerable spring like flowers in a meadow.
"There, on the last level of the circles where those phantoms dwell
that I had left behind me, like sorrows one would fain forget, I saw a
vast shade. Standing in an attitude of aspiration, that soul looked
eagerly into space; his feet were riveted by the will of God to the
topmost point of the margin, and he remained for ever in the painful
strain by which we project our purpose when we long to soar, as birds
about to take wing. I saw the man; he neither looked at us nor heard
us; every muscle quivered and throbbed; at each separate instant he
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: him in a battle, crushing him. His rival he helped to establish on the
throne, and having made him a friend to Lacedaemon, and having
acquired vast sums besides, he turned and set sail homewards, even in
mid-winter, hastening so that Sparta might not lie inactive, but
against the coming summer be alert to confront the foe.
[35] Or, "But to pass on, he was already, may be, eighty years of age,
when it came under his observation. . . ."
[36] This same Tachos.
[37] See "Hell." VII. i. 36; iv. 9.
[38] I.e. "the army under Nectanebos." See Diod. xv. 92; Plut. "Ages."
xxxvii. (Clough, iv. 44 foll.)
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: house servants, and a Chinaman remain."
A man lay stretched upon his blankets in a tent next to
that occupied by Pesita. At the sound of the speaker's voice,
low though it was, he raised his head and listened. He heard
every word, and a scowl settled upon his brow. Barbara
stolen! Mr Harding practically alone upon the ranch! And
Pesita in possession of this information!
Bridge rose to his feet. He buckled his cartridge belt about
his waist and picked up his carbine, then he crawled under the
rear wall of his tent and walked slowly off in the direction of
the picket line where the horses were tethered.
The Mucker |
