| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: your limbs underneath are shrouded in night; and the voice of lamentation
bursts forth, and your cheeks are wet with tears. And the vestibule is
full, and the court is full, of ghosts descending into the darkness of
Erebus, and the sun has perished out of heaven, and an evil mist is spread
abroad (Od.).'
And there are many such passages in the Iliad also; as for example in the
description of the battle near the rampart, where he says:--
'As they were eager to pass the ditch, there came to them an omen: a
soaring eagle, holding back the people on the left, bore a huge bloody
dragon in his talons, still living and panting; nor had he yet resigned the
strife, for he bent back and smote the bird which carried him on the breast
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: it. Placed at some distance to the left of this point, it would
have admitted him to the last room of the four, the room without
other approach or egress, had it not, to his intimate conviction,
been closed SINCE his former visitation, the matter probably of a
quarter of an hour before. He stared with all his eyes at the
wonder of the fact, arrested again where he stood and again holding
his breath while he sounded his sense. Surely it had been
SUBSEQUENTLY closed - that is it had been on his previous passage
indubitably open!
He took it full in the face that something had happened between -
that he couldn't have noticed before (by which he meant on his
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: he asked. "Didn't I do my work?"
The other met his look with one of cold indifference, and answered,
"There will be nothing for you here, I said."
Jurgis had his suspicions as to the dreadful meaning of that incident,
and he went away with a sinking at the heart. He went and took his
stand with the mob of hungry wretches who were standing about in
the snow before the time station. Here he stayed, breakfastless,
for two hours, until the throng was driven away by the clubs of
the police. There was no work for him that day.
Jurgis had made a good many acquaintances in his long services at the
yards--there were saloonkeepers who would trust him for a drink and a
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