| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: would have come in the first group. She craved excitement.
There was little chance to satisfy such craving in Wetona, but
she managed to find certain means. The traveling men from the
Burke House just across the street used to drop in at the Bijou
for an evening's entertainment. They usually sat well toward the
front, and Terry's expert playing, and the gloss of her black
hair, and her piquant profile as she sometimes looked up toward
the stage for a signal from one of the performers caught their
fancy, and held it.
She found herself, at the end of a year or two, with a rather
large acquaintance among these peripatetic gentlemen. You
One Basket |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: travelled by steamer along a fjord, or hired a rowboat to cross from
point to point. One day we would be in a good little hotel, with
polyglot guests, and serving-maids in stagey Norse costumes,--like
the famous inn at Stalheim, which commands the amazing panorama of
the Naerodal. Another day we would lodge in a plain farmhouse like
the station at Nedre Vasenden, where eggs and fish were the staples
of diet, and the farmer's daughter wore the picturesque peasants'
dress, with its tall cap, without any dramatic airs. Lakes and
rivers, precipices and gorges, waterfalls and glaciers and snowy
mountains were our daily repast. We drove over five hundred miles
in various kinds of open wagons, KARIOLS for one, and STOLKJAERRES
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: granted, how inconsistent would they be if they trembled and repined,
instead of rejoicing at their departure to that place where, when they
arrive, they hope to gain that which in life they desired--and this was
wisdom--and at the same time to be rid of the company of their enemy. Many
a man has been willing to go to the world below animated by the hope of
seeing there an earthly love, or wife, or son, and conversing with them.
And will he who is a true lover of wisdom, and is strongly persuaded in
like manner that only in the world below he can worthily enjoy her, still
repine at death? Will he not depart with joy? Surely he will, O my
friend, if he be a true philosopher. For he will have a firm conviction
that there and there only, he can find wisdom in her purity. And if this
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