| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lemorne Versus Huell by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard: "A child."
"Yes, a child; not a man nor a woman."
"I teach music. I can not dream over 'one, two, three.'"
"*You*--a music teacher!"
"For six years."
I was aware that he looked at me from head to foot, and I picked
at the lace on my invariable black silk; but what did it matter
whether I owned that I was a genteel pauper, representing my aunt's
position for two months, or not?
"Where?"
"In Waterbury."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all, and especially the
helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with white
radiance, and scatter an illumination everywhere about upon the
floor. This bright panoply was not meant for mere idle show, but
had been
THE GOVERNOR'S HALL 129
 The Scarlet Letter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as any beheld
who were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly
wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike
impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the
dead could adequately tell. So that--let us say it again--no dying
Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier thoughts than those, whose
mysterious shades you saw creeping over the face of poor Queequeg, as
he quietly lay in his swaying hammock, and the rolling sea seemed
gently rocking him to his final rest, and the ocean's invisible
flood-tide lifted him higher and higher towards his destined heaven.
 Moby Dick |