| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: what goods we had: and, in the first place, he bought all our
opium, and gave us a very good price for it, paying us in gold by
weight, some in small pieces of their own coin, and some in small
wedges, of about ten or twelves ounces each. While we were dealing
with him for our opium, it came into my head that he might perhaps
deal for the ship too, and I ordered the interpreter to propose it
to him. He shrunk up his shoulders at it when it was first
proposed to him; but in a few days after he came to me, with one of
the missionary priests for his interpreter, and told me he had a
proposal to make to me, which was this: he had bought a great
quantity of our goods, when he had no thoughts of proposals made to
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: was one of the great puzzles of old Greek philosophy, as long as it was
earnest and cared to have any puzzles at all: it has been, since the
days of Spinoza, the great puzzle of all earnest modern philosophers.
Philo offered a solution in that idea of a Logos, or Word of God,
Divinity articulate, speaking and acting in time and space, and
therefore by successive acts; and so doing, in time and space, the will
of the timeless and spaceless Father, the Abysmal and Eternal Being, of
whom he was the perfect likeness. In calling this person the Logos, and
making him the source of all human reason, and knowledge of eternal
laws, he only translated from Hebrew into Greek the name which he found
in his sacred books, "The Word of God." As yet we have found no unfair
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: me. Who conspicuously walks the Rialto now, and what does he or
she wear? Are the trees still green in Madison Square, or have
they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana on the Garden
Theatre still keep her vestal vows through all the exasperating
changes of weather? Who has your brother's old studio now, and
what misguided aspirants practice their scales in the rookeries
about Carnegie Hall? What do people go to see at the theaters,
and what do they eat and drink there in the world nowadays? You
see, I'm homesick for it all, from the Battery to Riverside. Oh,
let me die in Harlem!" She was interrupted by a violent attack
of coughing, and Everett, embarrassed by her discomfort, plunged
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
