| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: stationary White-Light of Barataria. Otherwise the place is
bleakly uninteresting: a wilderness of wind-swept grasses and
sinewy weeds waving away from a thin beach ever speckled with
drift and decaying things,--worm-riddled timbers, dead porpoises.
Eastward the russet level is broken by the columnar silhouette of
the light house, and again, beyond it, by some puny scrub timber,
above which rises the angular ruddy mass of the old brick fort,
whose ditches swarm with crabs, and whose sluiceways are half
choked by obsolete cannon-shot, now thickly covered with
incrustation of oyster shells.... Around all the gray circling of
a shark-haunted sea...
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: hall. He hit me a blow in the neck that knocked me four yards. It
was the "rabbit blow" and he expected it to break my neck. The
hard muscles that the puddling furnace put there saved my life. I
sprang up, and he came after me again. I seized the big fellow by
the ankles and threw him down. Then I battered his head against
the floor until I was satisfied that he could do me no more harm.
He went home and took to his bed.
He announced that when he got out he would charge me with
assault. I went before the mayor and offered to plead guilty to
such a charge. The mayor protested against it. He said I had done
the right thing in protecting the honor of the city, and that the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: as happened to the Gracchi in Rome and to Messer Giorgio Scali[+] in
Florence. But granted a prince who has established himself as above,
who can command, and is a man of courage, undismayed in adversity, who
does not fail in other qualifications, and who, by his resolution and
energy, keeps the whole people encouraged--such a one will never find
himself deceived in them, and it will be shown that he has laid his
foundations well.
[*] Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, conquered by the Romans under Flamininus
in 195 B.C.; killed 192 B.C.
[+] Messer Giorgio Scali. This event is to be found in Machiavelli's
"Florentine History," Book III.
The Prince |
