| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: which had evidently grown thicker and poured into the room.
Then it occurred to me that I had shut the window before I had
come to bed. I would have got out to make certain on the point,
but some leaden lethargy seemed to chain my limbs and even my will.
I lay still and endured, that was all. I closed my eyes, but could
still see through my eyelids. (It is wonderful what tricks our dreams
play us, and how conveniently we can imagine.) The mist grew thicker
and thicker and I could see now how it came in, for I could see it
like smoke, or with the white energy of boiling water, pouring in,
not through the window, but through the joinings of the door.
It got thicker and thicker, till it seemed as if it became concentrated
Dracula |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon: ix. 27; II. i. 9; where "adjutants," "orderlies" would seem to be
implied.
[6] Al. "to prevent whole divisions losing their way." Cf. "Anab."
VIII. iii. 18.
Again, if there is prospect of danger on the march, a prudent general
can hardly show his wisdom better than by sending out advanced patrols
in front of the ordinary exploring parties to reconnoitre every inch
of ground minutely. So to be apprised of the enemy's position in
advance, and at as great a distance off as possible, cannot fail to be
useful, whether for purposes of attack or defence; just as it is
useful also to enforce a halt at the passage of a river or some other
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: passed. Men have set their mark on mankind forever, as they thought; but
time has washed it out as it has washed out mountains and continents." She
raised herself on her elbow. "And what if we could help mankind, and leave
the traces of our work upon it to the end? Mankind is only an ephemeral
blossom on the tree of time; there were others before it opened; there will
be others after it has fallen. Where was man in the time of the
dicynodont, and when hoary monsters wallowed in the mud? Will he be found
in the aeons that are to come? We are sparks, we are shadows, we are
pollen, which the next wind will carry away. We are dying already; it is
all a dream.
"I know that thought. When the fever of living is on us, when the desire
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