| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde: bring home some money, and she is crying. She has no shoes or
stockings, and her little head is bare. Pluck out my other eye,
and give it to her, and her father will not beat her."
"I will stay with you one night longer," said the Swallow, "but I
cannot pluck out your eye. You would be quite blind then."
"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "do as I
command you."
So he plucked out the Prince's other eye, and darted down with it.
He swooped past the match-girl, and slipped the jewel into the palm
of her hand. "What a lovely bit of glass," cried the little girl;
and she ran home, laughing.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: And what will they make of you?
A statuary, of course.
Well now, I said, you and I are going to Protagoras, and we are ready to
pay him money on your behalf. If our own means are sufficient, and we can
gain him with these, we shall be only too glad; but if not, then we are to
spend the money of your friends as well. Now suppose, that while we are
thus enthusiastically pursuing our object some one were to say to us: Tell
me, Socrates, and you Hippocrates, what is Protagoras, and why are you
going to pay him money,--how should we answer? I know that Pheidias is a
sculptor, and that Homer is a poet; but what appellation is given to
Protagoras? how is he designated?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: understand. It would have been easier had she been more complex,
more feminine--if he could have counted on her imaginative
sympathy or her moral obtuseness--but he was sure of neither. He
was sure of nothing but that, for a time, he must avoid her.
Glennard could not rid himself of the delusion that by and by his
action would cease to make its consequences felt. He would not
have cared to own to himself that he counted on the dulling of his
sensibilities: he preferred to indulge the vague hypothesis that
extraneous circumstances would somehow efface the blot upon his
conscience. In his worst moments of self-abasement he tried to
find solace in the thought that Flamel had sanctioned his course.
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