| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: Would she really not be long? What was the time now? Out came the watch;
he stared at nothing. That was rather queer of Janey, wasn't it? Why
couldn't she have told the stewardess to say good-bye for her? Why did she
have to go chasing after the ship's doctor? She could have sent a note
from the hotel even if the affair had been urgent. Urgent? Did it--could
it mean that she had been ill on the voyage--she was keeping something from
him? That was it! He seized his hat. He was going off to find that
fellow and to wring the truth out of him at all costs. He thought he'd
noticed just something. She was just a touch too calm--too steady. From
the very first moment--
The curtains rang. Janey was back. He jumped to his feet.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: Isaiah's commissions, as given in Exodus, chaps. iii. and iv.,
and Isaiah, chap. vi.
Here, to take another Jewish case, is the way in which Philo of
Alexandria describes his inspiration:--
"Sometimes, when I have come to my work empty, I have suddenly
become full; ideas being in an invisible manner showered upon me,
and implanted in me from on high; so that through the influence
of divine inspiration, I have become greatly excited, and have
known neither the place in which I was, nor those who were
present, nor myself, nor what I was saying, nor what I was
writing, for then I have been conscious of a richness of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: employing his friend, our friend de Trailles, in the high comedy of
politics. Maxime had looked high for his conquests; he had no
experience of untitled women; and at fifty years he felt that he had a
right to take a bite of the so-called wild fruit, much as a sportsman
will halt under a peasant's apple-tree. So the Count found a reading-
room for Mlle. Chocardelle, a rather smart little place to be had
cheap, as usual--"
"Pooh!" said Nathan. "She did not stay in it six months. She was too
handsome to keep a reading-room."
"Perhaps you are the father of her child?" suggested the lorette.
Desroches resumed.
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