| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: handcuff about the wrist of each symbolizing their indissoluble
union in the holy bonds of wedlock.
Would Turan's promised succor come too late? Tara listened to the
long, monotonous intonation of the wedding service. She heard the
virtues of O-Tar extolled and the beauties of the bride. The
moment was approaching and still no sign of Turan. But what could
he accomplish should he succeed in reaching the throne room,
other than to die with her? There could be no hope of rescue.
The dignitary lifted the golden handcuffs from the pillow upon
which they reposed. He blessed them and reached for Tara's wrist.
The time had come! The thing could go no further, for alive or
The Chessmen of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: pass off words in their stead, and actually live upon them as a bird
lives on the seeds of his millet. Pray do not laugh; a word is worth
quite as much as an idea in a land where the ticket on a sack is of
more importance than the contents. Have we not seen libraries working
off the word "picturesque" when literature would have cut the throat
of the word "fantastic"? Fiscal genius has guessed the proper tax on
intellect; it has accurately estimated the profits of advertising; it
has registered a prospectus of the quantity and exact value of the
property, weighing its thought at the intellectual Stamp Office in the
Rue de la Paix.
Having become an article of commerce, intellect and all its products
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: pleasure that he seeks, though he may think so; his design and his
sufficient reward is to verify his own existence and taste the
variety of human fate. To him, before the razor-edge of curiosity
is dulled, all that is not actual living and the hot chase of
experience wears a face of a disgusting dryness difficult to recall
in later days; or if there be any exception - and here destiny
steps in - it is in those moments when, wearied or surfeited of the
primary activity of the senses, he calls up before memory the image
of transacted pains and pleasures. Thus it is that such an one
shies from all cut-and-dry professions, and inclines insensibly
toward that career of art which consists only in the tasting and
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