| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: That burns, and must burn somehow for the best.
The Tavern
Whenever I go by there nowadays
And look at the rank weeds and the strange grass,
The torn blue curtains and the broken glass,
I seem to be afraid of the old place;
And something stiffens up and down my face,
For all the world as if I saw the ghost
Of old Ham Amory, the murdered host,
With his dead eyes turned on me all aglaze.
The Tavern has a story, but no man
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: grated opening. He was a Hercules for strength, he worshiped Elie
Magus, as Sancho Panza worshiped Don Quixote. All day long the dogs
were shut up without food; at nightfall Abramko let them loose; and by
a cunning device the old Jew kept each animal at his post in the
courtyard or the garden by hanging a piece of meat just out of reach
on the top of a pole. The animals guarded the house, and sheer hunger
guarded the dogs. No odor that reached their nostrils could tempt them
from the neighborhood of that piece of meat; they would not have left
their places at the foot of the poles for the most engaging female of
the canine species. If a stranger by any chance intruded, the dogs
suspected him of ulterior designs upon their rations, which were only
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: nearer him. "I was awfully afraid of you when you first came; even when I
first saw you;--you aren't dressed as most of us dress, you know. But the
minute the fire shone on your face I said, 'It's all right.' Curious,
isn't it?" said Peter. "I don't know you from Adam, but if you were to
take up my gun and point it at me, I wouldn't move! I'd lie down here and
go to sleep with my head at your feet; curious, isn't it, when I don't know
you from Adam? My name's Peter Halket. What's yours?"
But the stranger was arranging the logs on the fire. The flames shot up
bright and high, and almost hid him from Peter Halket's view.
"By gad! how they burn when you arrange them!" said Peter.
They sat quiet in the blaze for a while.
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