| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: "When you--" but I stopped, perceiving it impossible. It was, of course,
not the many transient passions on which he had squandered his substance,
but the one where faith also had seemed to unite. Had he not married
once, innocent of the woman's being already a wife? But I stopped, for to
trench here was not for me or any one.
And my pause strangely flashed on him something of that I had in my mind.
"No," he said, his eyes steady and serious upon me, "don't you ask about
the things you're meaning." Then his face grew radiant and rather stern.
"Do you suppose I don't know she's too good for me? And that some bygones
can't ever be bygones? But if you," he said, "never come to look away up
to a woman from away down, and mean to win her just the same as if you
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: But no, not Mede-land with its wealth of woods,
Nor Ganges fair, and Hermus thick with gold,
Can match the praise of Italy; nor Ind,
Nor Bactria, nor Panchaia, one wide tract
Of incense-teeming sand. Here never bulls
With nostrils snorting fire upturned the sod
Sown with the monstrous dragon's teeth, nor crop
Of warriors bristled thick with lance and helm;
But heavy harvests and the Massic juice
Of Bacchus fill its borders, overspread
With fruitful flocks and olives. Hence arose
Georgics |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: you may run the hazard of your lives, and delicate because I must
ask an absolute discretion upon all that you shall see or hear.
From an utter stranger the request is almost comically extravagant;
I am well aware of this; and I would add at once, if there be any
one present who has heard enough, if there be one among the party
who recoils from a dangerous confidence and a piece of Quixotic
devotion to he knows not whom - here is my hand ready, and I shall
wish him good-night and God-speed with all the sincerity in the
world."
A very tall, black man, with a heavy stoop, immediately responded
to this appeal.
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