| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: friends, be with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest; if any
awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when the day
returns to us--our sun and comforter--call us with morning faces,
eager to labour, eager to be happy, if happiness shall be our
portion, and, if the day be marked to sorrow, strong to endure it.
We thank thee and praise thee; and, in the words of Him to whom
this day is sacred, close our oblation."
The man who made that kindly human prayer knew the meaning of white
heather. And I dare to hope that I too have known something of its
meaning, since that evening when the Mistress of the Glen picked
the spray and gave it to me on the lonely moor. "And now," she
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Peter Byrne was early in the dining-room. He had made, for him, a
careful toilet, which consisted of a shave and clean linen. But
he had gone further: He had discovered, for the first time in the
three months of its defection, a button missing from his coat,
and had set about to replace it. He had cut a button from another
coat, by the easy method of amputating it with a surgical
bistoury, and had sewed it in its new position with a curved
surgical needle and a few inches of sterilized catgut. The
operation was slow and painful, and accomplished only with the
aid of two cigarettes and an artery clip. When it was over he
tied the ends in a surgeon's knot underneath and stood back to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: from the Lycosa, who protests furiously. I fling her in exchange a
pill taken from another Lycosa. It is at once seized in the fangs,
embraced by the legs and hung on to the spinneret. Her own or
another's: it is all one to the Spider, who walks away proudly
with the alien wallet. This was to be expected, in view of the
similarity of the pills exchanged.
A test of another kind, with a second subject, renders the mistake
more striking. I substitute, in the place of the lawful bag which
I have removed, the work of the Silky Epeira. The colour and
softness of the material are the same in both cases; but the shape
is quite different. The stolen object is a globe; the object
The Life of the Spider |
