| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: by habit, he began to cherish a longing for advice. It was not to
be had directly; but perhaps, he thought, it might be fished for.
Presently after, he sat on one side of his own hearth, with
Mr. Guest, his head clerk, upon the other, and midway between, at
a nicely calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a
particular old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the
foundations of his house. The fog still slept on the wing above
the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and
through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the
procession of the town's life was still rolling in through the
great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. But the room was
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: They repaired to the hall and took their seats at the head of the long
table. For the Spanish centuries of stately custom lived at Santa YsabeI
del Mar, inviolate, feudal, remote.
They were the only persons of quality present; and between themselves and
the gente de razon a space intervened. Behind the Padre's chair stood an
Indian to waft upon him, and another stood behind the chair of Gaston
Villere. Each of these servants wore one single white garment, and
offered the many dishes to the gente fina and refilled their glasses. At
the lower end of the table a general attendant wafted upon mesclados--the
half-breeds. There was meat with spices, and roasted quail, with various
cakes and other preparations of grain; also the brown fresh olives and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: Waldo, as he sat with his knees drawn up to his chin and his arms folded on
them, looked at it all and smiled. An evil world, a deceitful,
treacherous, mirage-like world it might be; but a lovely world for all
that, and to sit there gloating in the sunlight was perfect. It was worth
having been a little child, and having cried and prayed so one might sit
there. He moved his hands as though he were washing them in the sunshine.
There will always be something worth living for while there are shimmery
afternoons. Waldo chuckled with intense inward satisfaction as the old hen
had done--she, over the insects and the warmth; he, over the old brick
walls, and the haze, and the little bushes. Beauty is God's wine, with
which He recompenses the souls that love Him; He makes them drunk.
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