| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: completed by a wallet, not so abundantly stocked as to incommode
the vigorous shoulders on which it hung. Brown, curly hair,
well-shaped features, and bright, cheerful eyes were nature's
gifts, and worth all that art could have done for his adornment.
The youth, one of whose names was Robin, finally drew from his
pocket the half of a little province bill of five shillings,
which, in the depreciation in that sort of currency, did but
satisfy the ferryman's demand, with the surplus of a sexangular
piece of parchment, valued at three pence. He then walked forward
into the town, with as light a step as if his day's journey had
not already exceeded thirty miles, and with as eager an eye as if
The Snow Image |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: O'er the great sea of being; and each one
With instinct given it which bears it on.
This bears away the fire towards the moon;
This is in mortal hearts the motive power
This binds together and unites the earth.
Nor only the created things that are
Without intelligence this bow shoots forth,
But those that have both intellect and love.
The Providence that regulates all this
Makes with its light the heaven forever quiet,
Wherein that turns which has the greatest haste.
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: with this general smile of mankind, and was industrious
to preserve it by compliance and officiousness,
but did not suffer his desire of pleasing to vitiate his
integrity. It was his established maxim, that a
promise is never to be broken; nor was it without
long reluctance that he once suffered himself to be
drawn away from a festal engagement by the
importunity of another company.
He spent the evening, as is usual in the rudiments
of vice, in perturbation and imperfect enjoyment,
and met his disappointed friends in the morning
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