| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: Heads of swine - gluttons - Alas! and where are they now?
Those that I played with, those that nursed me, those that I nursed?
God, and I outliving them! I, the least and the worst -
I, that thought myself crafty, snared by this herd of swine,
In the tortures of hell and desolate, stripped of all that was mine:
All! - my friends and my fathers - the silver heads of yore
That trooped to the council, the children that ran to the open door
Crying with innocent voices and clasping a father's knees!
And mine, my wife - my daughter - my sturdy climber of trees
Ah, never to climb again!"
Thus in the dusk of the night,
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: and in the other uplifting an iron sword-hilt. The latter object,
being more successfully depicted by the artist, stood out in far
greater prominence than the sacred volume. Face to face with this
picture, on entering the apartment, Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon came
to a pause; regarding it with a singular scowl, a strange
contortion of the brow, which, by people who did not know her,
would probably have been interpreted as an expression of bitter
anger and ill-will. But it was no such thing. She, in fact, felt
a reverence for the pictured visage, of which only a far-descended
and time-stricken virgin could be susceptible; and this forbidding
scowl was the innocent result of her near-sightedness, and an
House of Seven Gables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: "Why should I be tired? I am very strong."
Amelia murmured something about such hard work.
"I never thought it would be hard work taking care of a baby,"
replied Eudora, "and especially such a very light baby."
Something whimsical crept into Eudora's voice; something
whimsical crept into the love-light of the other women's eyes.
Again a soft ripple of mirth swept over them.
"Especially a baby who never cries," said Amelia.
"No, he never does cry," said Eudora, demurely.
They laughed again. Then Amelia rose and left the room to get
the tea-things. The old serving-woman who had lived with them
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