| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: unsubstantial sounds of whistling winds, or startled birds, modulated
by a romantic fancy, which amuse while they affright; but such
tones of misery as carry a dreadful certainty directly to the heart.
What effect must they then have produced on one, true to the touch
of sympathy, and tortured by maternal apprehension!
Her infant's image was continually floating on Maria's sight,
and the first smile of intelligence remembered, as none but a
mother, an unhappy mother, can conceive. She heard her half speaking
half cooing, and felt the little twinkling fingers on her burning
bosom--a bosom bursting with the nutriment for which this cherished
child might now be pining in vain. From a stranger she could indeed
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: IN the ancient days there went three men upon pilgrimage; one was a
priest, and one was a virtuous person, and the third was an old
rover with his axe.
As they went, the priest spoke about the grounds of faith.
"We find the proofs of our religion in the works of nature," said
he, and beat his breast.
"That is true," said the virtuous person.
"The peacock has a scrannel voice," said the priest, "as has been
laid down always in our books. How cheering!" he cried, in a voice
like one that wept. "How comforting!"
"I require no such proofs," said the virtuous person.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: has her cross. Isn't that true, my dear?"
Frau Brechenmacher saw her husband among his colleagues at the next table.
He was drinking far too much, she knew--gesticulating wildly, the saliva
spluttering out of his mouth as he talked.
"Yes," she assented, "that's true. Girls have a lot to learn."
Wedged in between these two fat old women, the Frau had no hope of being
asked to dance. She watched the couples going round and round; she forgot
her five babies and her man and felt almost like a girl again. The music
sounded sad and sweet. Her roughened hands clasped and unclasped
themselves in the folds of her skirt. While the music went on she was
afraid to look anybody in the face, and she smiled with a little nervous
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