| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: "Yes, it was too bad."
"Too bad?"
"What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home."
I can't name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such
a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I
heard myself throw off with homely force: "Stuff and nonsense!"
But the next after that I must have sounded stern enough.
"What WERE these things?"
My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him
avert himself again, and that movement made ME, with a single bound
and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: the more particularly as in a measure the prophetic
hint has been fulfilled. So make the most of the
present. I shall see you daily during this last
precious fortnight, for I am determined this
arrangement shall cease; and you must exorcise
coquetry and abet me whenever there is a chance
of a word alone."
She nodded, but she noted with a sigh that he
said no more of sudden flight. She would never
have consented to jeopardize the least of his inter-
ests, but she fain would have been besought.
Rezanov |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: a quarter of an hour you shall be adoring Jesus Christ as your
God and Saviour; you shall lie prostrate with your face upon the
ground in a humble church; you shall be smiting your breast at
the foot of a priest; you shall pass the carnival in a college of
Jesuits to prepare yourself to receive baptism, ready to give
your life for the Catholic faith; you shall renounce the world
and its pomps and pleasures; renounce your fortune, your hopes,
and if need be, your betrothed; the affections of your family,
the esteem of your friends, and your attachment to the Jewish
people; you shall have no other aspiration than to follow Christ
and bear his cross till death;'--if, I say, a prophet had come to
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