| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: Many men were moved, and many women's com-
passion testified itself in tears. Counsel for the de-
fence rose and said:
"Your honor, in our remarks at the opening of this
trial, we foreshadowed our purpose to prove that our
client did this fearful deed while under the influence
of a blind and irresponsible delirium produced by drink.
We have changed our mind. We shall not offer that
plea." [Then to the clerk:] "Call Thomas Sawyer!"
A puzzled amazement awoke in every face in the
house, not even excepting Potter's. Every eye fast-
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: We gaze at the pale grey lustrous sea a moment,
We rub the darkness from our eyes,
And face our thousand devious secret mornings . . .
And do not see how the pale mist, slowly ascending,
Shaped by the sun, shines like a white-robed dreamer
Compassionate over our towers bending.
There, like one who gazes into a crystal,
He broods upon our city with sombre eyes;
He sees our secret fears vaguely unfolding,
Sees cloudy symbols shape to rise.
Each gleaming point of light is like a seed
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: which the musician and the poet are at the same level. Here,
then, we have the simple secret of Wagner's preemminence as a
dramatic musician. He wrote the poems as well as composed the
music of his "stage festival plays," as he called them.
Up to a certain point in his career Wagner paid the penalty of
undertaking two arts instead of one. Mozart had his trade as a
musician at his fingers' ends when he was twenty, because he had
served an arduous apprenticeship to that trade and no other.
Wagner was very far from having attained equal mastery at
thirty-five: indeed he himself has told us that not until he had
passed the age at which Mozart died did he compose with that
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