| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Or whether man or woman wins.
And by the same eternal token,
Who knows just how it will all end? --
This drama of hard words unspoken,
This fireside farce, without a friend
Or enemy to comprehend
What augurs when two lives are broken,
And fear finds nothing left to mend.
He stares in vain for what awaits him,
And sees in Love a coin to toss;
He smiles, and her cold hush berates him
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Master Key by L. Frank Baum: Make kill with bang-sticks. We kill white man with club. Then we eat
white man. Dead white man good. Live white man bad!"
This did not please Rob at all. The idea of being eaten by savages
had never occurred to him as a sequel to his adventures. So he said
rather anxiously to the chief.
"Look here, old fellow; do you want to die?"
"Me no die. You die," was the reply.
"You'll die, too, if you eat me," said Rob. "I'm full of poison."
"Poison? Don't know poison," returned the chief, much perplexed to
understand him.
"Well, poison will make you sick--awful sick. Then you'll die. I'm
 The Master Key |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Cruise of the Jasper B. by Don Marquis: commanders assert themselves; it is these electric seconds from
which the hero gathers his vital lightning and forges his mordant
bolt. Genius claims and rules these instants, and the gods are
on the side of those who boldly grasp loose wisdom and bind it
into sheaves of judgment. Cleggett (whom Homer would have loved)
was the first to recover his poise. He came to his decision
instantaneously. A lesser man might have lost all by rushing
after his retreating enemies; a lesser man, carried away by
excitement, would have pursued. Cleggett did not relax his grasp
upon the situation, he restrained his ardor.
"Stand firm, men! Do not leave the ship," he shouted. "The day
|