| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: wind tosseth a heap of parched husks, and scatters them
this way and that, even so did the wave scatter the long
beams of the raft. But Odysseus bestrode a single beam, as
one rideth on a courser, and stript him of the garments
which fair Calypso gave him. And presently he wound the
veil beneath his breast, and fell prone into the sea,
outstretching his hands as one eager to swim. And the lord,
the shaker of the earth, saw him and shook his head, and
communed with his own soul. 'Even so, after all thy
sufferings, go wandering over the deep, till thou shalt
come among a people, the fosterlings of Zeus. Yet for all
The Odyssey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: instead of casting into his lazy lap treasures which he would not have
known how to use, she has taught him to mine for them himself; and has
by her wise refusal to gratify his intellectual greediness, excited his
hunger, only that he may be the stronger to hunt and till for his own
subsistence; and thus, the deeper he drinks, in after years, at
fountains wisely forbidden to him while he was a Cambridge student, and
sees his old companions growing up into sound-headed and sound-hearted
practical men, liberal and expansive, and yet with a firm standing-
ground for thought and action, he learns to complain less and less of
Cambridge studies, and more and more of that conceit and haste of his
own, which kept him from reaping the full advantage of her training.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: keep you, my dear. I'll not try to manage you. They managed me--"
A sigh spoke the rest of this sentence. "But I'm not worried
about you--at least, not very much. You have never done anything
that was not worthy of the Starks. And if you're going to take
him, do it before I die so that I can bid him welcome for your
sake. God bless you, my dear."
And after the girl had gone back to Bennington, the great-aunt
had this thought: "She is like us all. She wants a man that is a
man." Nor did the old lady breathe her knowledge to any member of
the family. For she was a loyal spirit, and her girl's confidence
was sacred to her.
The Virginian |
