| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: seemed to echo the irrevocable judgment which his words pronounced:
"That the crimes against God and each other which had destroyed the
parents' life should enter into the children's blood, and that
never thereafter should there fail a Mervyn to bring shame or death
upon one generation of his father's house.
"There were two sons of that ill-fated marriage," he went on after
a pause, "boys at the time of their parents' death. When they grew
up they both fell in love with the same woman, and one killed the
other in a duel. The story of the next generation was a peculiarly
sad one. Two brothers took opposite sides during the civil
troubles; but so fearful were they of the curse which lay upon the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Sportsman by Xenophon: gain, the other cannot. The very speech and intonation of the one has
melody, of the other harshness. And with regard to things divine, the
one set know no obstacle to their impiety, the others are of all men
the most pious. Indeed ancient tales affirm[28] that the very gods
themselves take joy in this work[29] as actors and spectators. So
that,[30] with due reflection on these things, the young who act upon
my admonitions will be found, perchance, beloved of heaven and
reverent of soul, checked by the thought that some one of the gods is
eyeing their performance.[31]
[27] Or, "Those people who would fain have the lion's share in the
state."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: vacancy and that the Beast had stolen away. It sounded too foolish
and too flat; the difference for him in this particular, the
extinction in his life of the element of suspense, was such as in
fact to surprise him. He could scarce have said what the effect
resembled; the abrupt cessation, the positive prohibition, of music
perhaps, more than anything else, in some place all adjusted and
all accustomed to sonority and to attention. If he could at any
rate have conceived lifting the veil from his image at some moment
of the past (what had he done, after all, if not lift it to HER?)
so to do this to-day, to talk to people at large of the Jungle
cleared and confide to them that he now felt it as safe, would have
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