| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: And know how much outweighed they are by darkness.
We are like searchers in a house of darkness,
A house of dust; we creep with little lanterns,
Throwing our tremulous arcs of light at random,
Now here, now there, seeing a plane, an angle,
An edge, a curve, a wall, a broken stairway
Leading to who knows what; but never seeing
The whole at once . . . We grope our way a little,
And then grow tired. No matter what we touch,
Dust is the answer--dust: dust everywhere.
If this were all--what were the use, you ask?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln: lean against the wall. Then he went into the dining room and came
back a second later carrying a glass of water, and I saw him take
up and open a small box and toss some white pills into his mouth;
then he took a good drink, and, picking up a handkerchief lying on
the table, he went back into the library."
There was silence as Sylvester's callous recital of the tragedy
ended. Helen, her eyes tearless and dark with suffering, sank
slowly back in her chair and rested her head against Barbara's
sympathetic shoulder.
"So Turnbull's death was accidental after all," exclaimed Ferguson.
"Or was it suicide?"
The Red Seal |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: Bannerman shaking his fist at the trainload of "plutes" lingered
with me. I still heard the voice of the knock-kneed reformer who
envied my husky limbs. The cry for bloody revolution was already
in the air. When would the mob be started and what would it do?
When Comrade Bannerman had robbed the rich and piled their
corpses in a Caesar's column, would not the knock-kneed uplifter
break my legs in making all men equal? These men were moved by
envy and they lusted for blood. I faced the problem with a thirst
for accurate knowledge, and my passion was not for bloodshed but
for brotherhood.
CHAPTER XXXVII
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