| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: Of each period Mr. Weightman wished to have something of the
best.
He understood its value, present as a certificate, and
prospective as
an investment.
It was only in the architecture of his town house that he
remained conservative, immovable, one might almost say
Early-Victorian-Christian. His country house at
Dulwich-on-the-Sound
was a palace of the Italian Renaissance. But in town
he adhered to an architecture which had moral associations,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: meantime recommended to him earnestly to use me more
tenderly, and win me with his usual good carriage; told him
of his terrifying and affrighting me with his threats of sending
me to a madhouse, and the like, and advised him not to make
a woman desperate on any account whatever.
He promised her to soften his behaviour, and bid her assure
me that he loved me as well as ever, and that he had so such
design as that of sending me to a madhouse, whatever he might
say in his passion; also he desired my mother to use the same
persuasions to me too, that our affections might be renewed,
and we might lie together in a good understanding as we used
Moll Flanders |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: shudder runs through my frame. Yes, it prevails, this treacherous power; it
undermines the firm, the lofty stem, and ere the bark withers, thy verdant
crown falls crashing to the earth.
Yet wherefore now, thou who hast so often chased the weightiest cares
like bubbles from thy brow, wherefore canst thou not dissipate this dire
foreboding which incessantly haunts thee in a thousand different shapes?
Since when hast thou trembled at the approach of death, amid whose
varying forms, thou weft wont calmly to dwell, as with the other shapes of
this familiar earth. But 'tis not he, the sudden foe, to encounter whom the
sound bosom emulously pants;---'tis the dungeon, emblem of the grave,
revolting alike to the hero and the coward. How intolerable I used to feel
Egmont |
