| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: "`The horror! The horror!'
"I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were dining
in the mess-room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who lifted
his eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored.
He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing
the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small
flies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces.
Suddenly the manager's boy put his insolent black head in the doorway,
and said in a tone of scathing contempt:
"`Mistah Kurtz--he dead.'
"All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and went on with my dinner.
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: an enclosure of gold; this was the spot where the family of the ten princes
first saw the light, and thither the people annually brought the fruits of
the earth in their season from all the ten portions, to be an offering to
each of the ten. Here was Poseidon's own temple which was a stadium in
length, and half a stadium in width, and of a proportionate height, having
a strange barbaric appearance. All the outside of the temple, with the
exception of the pinnacles, they covered with silver, and the pinnacles
with gold. In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously
wrought everywhere with gold and silver and orichalcum; and all the other
parts, the walls and pillars and floor, they coated with orichalcum. In
the temple they placed statues of gold: there was the god himself standing
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: not to be found in all the world.
The next morning there was a great buzzing in the palace, you may
be sure. The princess told all about how she had been carried
away during the night, and had supped in such a splendid palace,
and with such a handsome man dressed like an emperor. She showed
her necklace of diamonds, and the king and his prime-minister
could not look at it or wonder at it enough. The prime-minister
and the king talked and talked the matter over together, and
every now and then the proud princess put in a word of her own.
"Anybody," said the prime-minister, "can see with half an eye
that it is all magic, or else it is a wonderful piece of good
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