| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa: in the wood!
"Hin! hin!" he groaned. Then pausing a moment, he set his
fan-like ears to catch any sound of approaching footsteps. There
was none. Not even a night bird twittered to help him out of his
predicament.
With a bold face, he made a start at random.
He fell into some tangled wood where he was held fast.
Manstin let go his bundle and began to lament having given away
his two eyes.
"Friend, my friend, I have need of you! The old oak tree
grandfather has gone off with my eyes and I am lost in the woods!"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: flowers, which in the early morning have not yet unfurled their cups,
twisted by the chills of night, the girl, as yet hardly awake, let her
blue eyes wander beyond the neighboring roofs to look at the sky;
then, from habit, she cast them down on the gloomy depths of the
street, where they immediately met those of her adorer. Vanity, no
doubt, distressed her at being seen in undress; she started back, the
worn pulley gave way, and the sash fell with the rapid run, which in
our day has earned for this artless invention of our forefathers an
odious name, /Fenetre a la Guillotine/. The vision had disappeared. To
the young man the most radiant star of morning seemed to be hidden by
a cloud.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: that had been built up by Alexander and the Ptolemies, by Clement and
the philosophers, and made void, to all appearance, nine hundred years
of human toil. The people, having no real hold on their hereditary
Creed, accepted, by tens of thousands, that of the Mussulman invaders.
The Christian remnant became tributaries; and Alexandria dwindled, from
that time forth, into a petty seaport town.
And now--can we pass over this new metaphysical school of Alexandria?
Can we help inquiring in what the strength of Islamism lay? I, at
least, cannot. I cannot help feeling that I am bound to examine in what
relation the creed of Omar and Amrou stands to the Alexandrian
speculations of five hundred years, and how it had power to sweep those
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