| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: hypothesis upon which the various ways of divining the future are
based seem absurd, the facts remain. Remark that it is not really more
wonderful that the seer should foretell the chief events of the future
than that he should read the past. Past and future, on the sceptic's
system, equally lie beyond the limits of knowledge. If the past has
left traces behind it, it is not improbable that future events have,
as it were, their roots in the present.
If a fortune-teller gives you minute details of past facts known only
to yourself, why should he not foresee the events to be produced by
existing causes? The world of ideas is cut out, so to speak, on the
pattern of the physical world; the same phenomena should be
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: one corner, to what he conceived to be a wing of the house.
The servant ushered him into a room--and, in despite
of himself, he sighed with pleasure at the sight of it.
The prettiest and most charming of rooms it seemed
to him to be--spacious and quaintly rambling in shape,
with a delicately-figured chintz repeating the dainty
effects of the walls upon the curtains and carpet and
bed-hangings and chair-covers, and with a bright fire
in the grate throwing its warm, cozy glow over everything.
He looked at the pictures on the walls, at the photographs
and little ornaments on the writing desk, and the high
The Market-Place |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: Senzangacona, and became a wanderer. With certain of the people of the
Umtetwa he wandered into Swaziland, and sojourned with the Halakazi
tribe in their great caves; and the end of it was that he killed the
chief of the tribe and took his place. After he was dead, my father
ruled in his place; but there was a great party in the tribe that
hated his rule because he was of the Zulu race, and it would have set
up a chief of the old Swazi blood in his place. Still, they could not
do this, for my father's hand was heavy on the people. Now I was the
only son of my father by his head wife, and born to be chief after
him, and therefore those of the Swazi party, and they were many and
great, hated me also. So matters stood till last year in the winter,
Nada the Lily |
