| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: glance which was foiled as by a diamond breast-plate. "You know not
what I am, nor what I can be, nor what I will. Do not reject my last
entreaty. Be mine for the good of that world whose happiness you bear
upon your heart. Be mine that my conscience may be pure; that a voice
divine may sound in my ears and infuse Good into the great enterprise
I have undertaken prompted by my hatred to the nations, but which I
swear to accomplish for their benefit if you will walk beside me. What
higher mission can you ask for love? what nobler part can woman aspire
to? I came to Norway to meditate a grand design."
"And you will sacrifice its grandeur," she said, "to an innocent girl
who loves you, and who will lead you in the paths of peace."
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: depopulation. Starving and shelterless crowds crawled
despairingly from one deserted village to another in a vain
search for food, or a resting-place in which to hide themselves
from the rain. The epidemics incident to the season were thus
spread over the whole country; and, until the close of the year,
disease continued so prevalent as to form a subject of
communication from the government in Bengal to the Court of
Directors. Millions of famished wretches died in the struggle to
live through the few intervening weeks that separated them from
the harvest, their last gaze being probably fixed on the
densely-covered fields that would ripen only a little too late
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: testimony to the devotion of ages long past, lay amidst pastures
and cornfields of small extent, but bounded and divided with
hedgerow timber of great age and size. There were few marks of
modern improvement. The environs of the place intimated neither
the solitude of decay nor the bustle of novelty; the houses were
old, but in good repair; and the beautiful little river murmured
freely on its way to the left of the town, neither restrained by
a dam nor bordered by a towing-path.
Upon a gentle eminence, nearly a mile to the southward of the
town, were seen, amongst many venerable oaks and tangled
thickets, the turrets of a castle as old as the walls of York and
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