| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: A shutter, like the leathern eyelid of a lizard, flickered over the
intensity of his gaze and obscured the letter R. In that flash of
darkness he heard people saying--he was a failure--that R was beyond him.
He would never reach R. On to R, once more. R--
Qualities that in a desolate expedition across the icy solitudes of the
Polar region would have made him the leader, the guide, the counsellor,
whose temper, neither sanguine nor despondent, surveys with equanimity
what is to be and faces it, came to his help again. R--
The lizard's eye flickered once more. The veins on his forehead bulged.
The geranium in the urn became startlingly visible and, displayed among
its leaves, he could see, without wishing it, that old, that obvious
To the Lighthouse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: all social problems,--slavery, caste, white or black. My duty
to my operatives has a narrow limit,--the pay-hour on Saturday
night. Outside of that, if they cut korl, or cut each other's
throats, (the more popular amusement of the two,) I am not
responsible."
The Doctor sighed,--a good honest sigh, from the depths of his
stomach.
"God help us! Who is responsible?"
"Not I, I tell you," said Kirby, testily. "What has the man who
pays them money to do with their souls' concerns, more than the
grocer or butcher who takes it?"
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: and dances and skips, and the fatigue is never felt.
In Washington Square, away down where Royal Street empties its
stream of children great and small into the broad channel of
Elysian Fields Avenue, there was a perfect Indian pow-wow. With
a little imagination one might have willed away the vision of the
surrounding houses, and fancied one's self again in the forest,
where the natives were holding a sacred riot. The square was
filled with spectators, masked and un-masked. It was amusing to
watch these mimic Red-men, they seemed so fierce and earnest.
Suddenly one chief touched another on the elbow. "See that
Mephisto and troubadour over there?" he whispered huskily.
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
