| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: waters. Michu closed the entrance to this retreat with large stones;
then, to keep the secret of it to himself and make it impenetrable to
others, he made a rule never to enter it except from the wooded height
above, by clambering down the crag instead of approaching it from the
pond.
Just as the fugitives arrived, the moon was casting her beautiful
silvery light on the aged tree-tops above the crag, and flickering on
the splendid foliage at the corners of the several paths, all of which
ended here, some with one tree, some with a group of trees. On all
sides the eye was irresistibly led along their vanishing perspectives,
following the curve of a wood-path or the solemn stretch of a forest
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: When Churchyards yawne, and Hell it selfe breaths out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter businesse as the day
Would quake to looke on. Soft now, to my Mother:
Oh Heart, loose not thy Nature; let not euer
The Soule of Nero, enter this firme bosome:
Let me be cruell, not vnnaturall,
I will speake Daggers to her, but vse none:
My Tongue and Soule in this be Hypocrites.
How in my words someuer she be shent,
To giue them Seales, neuer my Soule consent.
Hamlet |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: several quiet years of existence, comfortably lodged in the
second floor of one of the smallest but oldest edifices. My
sitting-room is an old wainscoted chamber, with small panels,
and set off with a miscellaneous array of furniture. I have a
particular respect for three or four high-backed claw-footed
chairs, covered with tarnished brocade, which bear the marks
of having seen better days, and have doubtless figured in some
of the old palaces of Little Britain. They seem to me to keep
together, and to look down with sovereign contempt upon
their leathern-bottomed neighbors: as I have seen decayed
gentry carry a high head among the plebeian society with which
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