| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: I did not notice it at first, but I see it now. Somehow he has
got his right arm on his left shoulder, and his left arm on his
right shoulder, and this shows us the back of his hands in both
instances. It makes him left-handed all around, which is a thing
which has never happened before, except perhaps in a museum.
That is the way with art, when it is not acquired but born to
you: you start in to make some simple little thing, not
suspecting that your genius is beginning to work and swell and
strain in secret, and all of a sudden there is a convulsion and
you fetch out something astonishing. This is called inspiration.
It is an accident; you never know when it is coming. I might
What is Man? |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: That once was mind! what woman taught you this?'
'Alone,' I said, 'from earlier than I know,
Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world,
I loved the woman: he, that doth not, lives
A drowning life, besotted in sweet self,
Or pines in sad experience worse than death,
Or keeps his winged affections clipt with crime:
Yet was there one through whom I loved her, one
Not learnèd, save in gracious household ways,
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants,
No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The White Moll by Frank L. Packard: slipped it into her pocket as he nodded affirmatively. "How much,
Daddy?"
"The White Moll!" He seemed still under the spell of amazement.
"It is nothing. There is no charge. It is nothing, of course."
"Thank you, Daddy!" she said softly - and laid a bill upon the
counter, and stepped back to the door. "Good-night!" she smiled.
She heard him call to her; but she was already on the street again,
and hurrying along. She felt better, somehow, in a mental way, for
that little encounter with the shady old pawnbroker. She was not
so much alone, perhaps, as she had thought; there were many, perhaps,
even if they were of the underworld, who had not swerved from the
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