| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: Before the measuring-tape the proudest tree of them all quails and
shrinks into itself. All those stories of four or five men
stretching their arms around it and not touching each other's
fingers, if one's pacing the shadow at noon and making it so many
hundred feet, die upon its leafy lips in the presence of the awful
ribbon which has strangled so many false pretensions.
As I rode along the pleasant way, watching eagerly for the object
of my journey, the rounded tops of the elms rose from time to time
at the road-side. Wherever one looked taller and fuller than the
rest, I asked myself, - "Is this it?" But as I drew nearer, they
grew smaller, - or it proved, perhaps, that two standing in a line
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: learning that a woman like you was her mother, I would endure
anything. You began your blackmailing,
MRS. ERLYNNE. [Shrugging her shoulders.] Don't use ugly words,
Windermere. They are vulgar. I saw my chance, it is true, and
took it.
LORD WINDERMERE. Yes, you took it - and spoiled it all last night
by being found out.
MRS. ERLYNNE. [With a strange smile.] You are quite right, I
spoiled it all last night.
LORD WINDERMERE. And as for your blunder in taking my wife's fan
from here and then leaving it about in Darlington's rooms, it is
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: foot of the left bank of the stream -- the southern bank --
and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his
enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of
one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept
with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it
over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked
like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing
beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank
were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their
arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A
strange roseate light shone through the spaces among their
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
