| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: trouble.' See?"
As Jimmie and his friend exchanged tales descriptive of their
prowess, Maggie leaned back in the shadow. Her eyes dwelt
wonderingly and rather wistfully upon Pete's face. The broken
furniture, grimey walls, and general disorder and dirt of her home
of a sudden appeared before her and began to take a
potential aspect. Pete's aristocratic person looked as if it might
soil. She looked keenly at him, occasionally, wondering if he was
feeling contempt. But Pete seemed to be enveloped in reminiscence.
"Hully gee," said he, "dose mugs can't phase me. Dey knows I
kin wipe up deh street wid any t'ree of dem."
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a
profound duplicity of me. Many a man would have even blazoned
such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views
that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost
morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of
my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that
made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench than in the
majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill
which divide and compound man's dual nature. In this case, I was
driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of
life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: There is your father's house, which is descended from Critias the son of
Dropidas, whose family has been commemorated in the panegyrical verses of
Anacreon, Solon, and many other poets, as famous for beauty and virtue and
all other high fortune: and your mother's house is equally distinguished;
for your maternal uncle, Pyrilampes, is reputed never to have found his
equal, in Persia at the court of the great king, or on the continent of
Asia, in all the places to which he went as ambassador, for stature and
beauty; that whole family is not a whit inferior to the other. Having such
ancestors you ought to be first in all things, and, sweet son of Glaucon,
your outward form is no dishonour to any of them. If to beauty you add
temperance, and if in other respects you are what Critias declares you to
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