| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: Verdi's hoofs. I brought it when I came. It is behind the times, too.
And, oh, my dear boy, our organ is still worse. So old, so old! To get a
proper one I would sacrifice even this piano of mine in a moment--only
the tinkling thing is not worth a sou to anybody except its master. But
there! Are you quite comfortable?" And having seen to his guest's needs,
and placed spirits and cigars and an ash-tray within his reach, the Padre
sat himself comfortably in his chair to hear and expose the false
doctrine of Il Trovatore.
By midnight all of the opera that Gaston could recall had been played and
sung twice. The convert sat in his chair no longer, but stood singing by
the piano. The potent swing and flow of rhythms, the torrid, copious
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: Vailima lay up some three miles of continual rise from Apia, and
more than half that distance from the nearest village. It was a
long way for a tired man to walk down every evening with the sole
purpose of joining in family worship; and the road through the bush
was dark, and, to the Samoan imagination, beset with supernatural
terrors. Wherefore, as soon as our household had fallen into a
regular routine, and the bonds of Samoan family life began to draw
us more closely together, Tusitala felt the necessity of including
our retainers in our evening devotions. I suppose ours was the
only white man's family in all Samoa, except those of the
missionaries, where the day naturally ended with this homely,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: through his arm.
After walking a few steps they found themselves under a clump of trees
which the hues of the sinking sun wrapped in a haze of red and brown.
This touch of natural magic lent a certain solemnity to the moment.
The young man's free and eager action, and, above all, the throbbing
of his surging heart, whose hurried beating spoke to Emilie's arm,
stirred her to an emotion that was all the more disturbing because it
was produced by the simplest and most innocent circumstances. The
restraint under which the young girls of the upper class live gives
incredible force to any explosion of feeling, and to meet an
impassioned lover is one of the greatest dangers they can encounter.
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