| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: beneath the flapping pennant, was the rapt, uplifted
countenance of the Crusader, there blazed the great glow of
hope. This woman movement, spoken of so glibly as
Suffrage, was, to the mind of this over-read, under-fed,
emotional, dreamy little Russian garment worker the glorious
means to a long hoped for end. She had idealized it, with
the imagery of her kind. She had endowed it with promise
that it would never actually hold for her, perhaps. And so
she marched on, down the great, glittering avenue, proudly
clutching her unwieldy banner, a stunted, grotesque,
magnificent figure. More than a figure. A symbol.
Fanny Herself |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: themselves would life be worth living if the offerings of a villain
rather than of a righteous man found favour in the sight of Heaven.
His belief was that the joy of the gods is greater in proportion to
the holiness of the giver, and he was ever an admirer of that line of
Hesiod which says,
According to thine ability do sacrifice to the immortal gods.[4]
[4] Hesiod, "Works and Days," 336. See "Anab." III. ii. 9.
"Yes," he would say, "in our dealings with friends and strangers
alike, and in reference to the demands of life in general, there is no
better motto for a man than that: 'let a man do according to his
ability.'"
The Memorabilia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: I could see the one mentioned by poor Lake, with a rampart exactly
on top. It seemed to be half lost in a queer antarctic haze -
such a haze, perhaps, as had been responsible for Lake’s early
notion of volcanism. The pass loomed directly before us, smooth
and windswept between its jagged and malignly frowning pylons.
Beyond it was a sky fretted with swirling vapors and lighted by
the low polar sun - the sky of that mysterious farther realm upon
which we felt no human eye had ever gazed.
A few more feet of
altitude and we would behold that realm. Danforth and I, unable
to speak except in shouts amidst the howling, piping wind that
At the Mountains of Madness |
