| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: like a cracked bell:
"Defend me! defend me!"
Together we went up a winding staircase. She knocked at a door in the
darkness, and a mute, like some familiar of the Inquisition, opened to
her. In another moment we stood in a room hung with ancient, ragged
tapestry, amid piles of old linen, crumpled muslin, and gilded brass.
"Behold the wealth that shall endure for ever!" said she.
I shuddered with horror; for just then, by the light of a tall torch
and two altar candles, I saw distinctly that this woman was fresh from
the graveyard. She had no hair. I turned to fly. She raised her
fleshless arm and encircled me with a band of iron set with spikes,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: terminating in a shrub oak copse where I could rest in the shade,
the other in a blackberry field where the green berries deepened
their tints by the time I had made another bout. Removing the
weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this
weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer
thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and
piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass
-- this was my daily work. As I had little aid from horses or
cattle, or hired men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, I
was much slower, and became much more intimate with my beans than
usual. But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: lived), and he hated to see a son of his play second fiddle
to an idler. After some hesitation, he ordered that the
friendship should cease - an unfair command, though seemingly
inspired by the spirit of prophecy; and John, saying nothing,
continued to disobey the order under the rose.
John was nearly nineteen when he was one day dismissed rather
earlier than usual from his father's office, where he was
studying the practice of the law. It was Saturday; and
except that he had a matter of four hundred pounds in his
pocket which it was his duty to hand over to the British
Linen Company's Bank, he had the whole afternoon at his
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