| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: surmounting many obstacles, in reaching the heart of the
continent, when he was betrayed into the hands of a hostile
native tribe. Then, stripped of all that he had, for two years
he led a wandering life in the desert, the slave of savages,
threatened with death at every moment, and more cruelly treated
than a dumb animal in the power of pitiless children. Physical
strength, and a mind braced to endurance, enabled him to survive
the horrors of that captivity; but his miraculous escape
well-nigh exhausted his energies. When he reached the French
colony at Senegal, a half-dead fugitive covered with rags, his
memories of his former life were dim and shapeless. The great
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: prematurely discovered, he felt that the softness of a mind,
amounting almost to feebleness, rendered her even dearer to him,
as a being who had voluntarily clung to him for protection, and
made him the arbiter of her fate for weal or woe. His feelings
towards her at such moments were those which have been since so
beautifully expressed by our immortal Joanna Baillie:
Thou sweetest thing,
That e'er did fix its lightly-fibred sprays
To the rude rock, ah! wouldst thou cling to me?
Rough and storm-worn I am; yet love me as
Thou truly dost, I will love thee again
The Bride of Lammermoor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: prayer?'
'I am Medeia, daughter of Aietes, and I saw my countrymen
here to-day; and I know that they are come to find me, and
take me home to die some dreadful death.'
Then Arete frowned, and said, 'Lead this girl in, my maidens;
and let the kings decide, not I.'
And Alcinous leapt up from his throne, and cried, 'Speak,
strangers, who are you? And who is this maiden?'
'We are the heroes of the Minuai,' said Jason; 'and this
maiden has spoken truth. We are the men who took the golden
fleece, the men whose fame has run round every shore. We
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