| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: like a pack-saddle.
"I am going to search that mountain," I went on, "for the treasure.
Decide now whether you are in it or not. If you wish to let a water-
mark or a variation shake your soul, you are no true adventurer.
Decide."
A white cloud of dust began to rise far down the river road. It was
the mail-wagon from Hesperus to Chico. Goodloe flagged it.
"I am done with the swindle," said he, sourly. "No one but a fool
would pay any attention to that paper now. Well, you always were a
fool, Jim. I leave you to your fate."
He gathered his personal traps, climbed into the mail-wagon, adjusted
Options |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: shop, she partly drew back her extended hand, "Where is the cent?"
The little boy had the cent ready, but, like a true-born Yankee,
would have preferred the better bargain to the worse. Looking
somewhat chagrined, he put the coin into Hepzibah's hand, and
departed, sending the second Jim Crow in quest of the former one.
The new shop-keeper dropped the first solid result of her commercial
enterprise into the till. It was done! The sordid stain of that
copper coin could never be washed away from her palm. The little
schoolboy, aided by the impish figure of the negro dancer, had wrought
an irreparable ruin. The structure of ancient aristocracy had been
demolished by him, even as if his childish gripe had torn down the
House of Seven Gables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: unity we shall find in everything. Having found it, we may next proceed to
look for two, if there be two, or, if not, then for three or some other
number, subdividing each of these units, until at last the unity with which
we began is seen not only to be one and many and infinite, but also a
definite number; the infinite must not be suffered to approach the many
until the entire number of the species intermediate between unity and
infinity has been discovered,--then, and not till then, we may rest from
division, and without further troubling ourselves about the endless
individuals may allow them to drop into infinity. This, as I was saying,
is the way of considering and learning and teaching one another, which the
gods have handed down to us. But the wise men of our time are either too
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