| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in Boston
and elsewhere, who were not slaves themselves, nor owners of
slaves, nor had anything to do with the question really. It was,
undoubtedly, the Abolitionists who set the torch alight, who began
the whole thing. And it is curious to note that from the slaves
themselves they received, not merely very little assistance, but
hardly any sympathy even; and when at the close of the war the
slaves found themselves free, found themselves indeed so absolutely
free that they were free to starve, many of them bitterly regretted
the new state of things. To the thinker, the most tragic fact in
the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: bethought me of the strange power I possessed of undoing all this harm.
"Now is my time!" I said to myself, as I moved back the hand of the
Watch, and saw, almost without surprise this time, all things restored
to the places they had occupied at the critical moment when I had first
noticed the fallen packing-case.
Instantly I stepped out into the street, picked up the box,
and replaced it in the cart: in the next moment the bicycle had spun
round the corner, passed the cart without let or hindrance, and soon
vanished in the distance, in a cloud of dust.
"Delightful power of magic!" I thought.
"How much of human suffering I have--not only relieved, but actually
Sylvie and Bruno |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: sight; the sound of the hammers the men were using made him
mechanically burst into tears.
"Jacquet," he said, "out of this dreadful night one idea has come to
me, only one, but one I must make a reality at any price. I cannot let
Clemence stay in any cemetery in Paris. I wish to burn her,--to gather
her ashes and keep her with me. Say nothing of this, but manage on my
behalf to have it done. I am going to /her/ chamber, where I shall
stay until the time has come to go. You alone may come in there to
tell me what you have done. Go, and spare nothing."
During the morning, Madame Jules, after lying in a mortuary chapel at
the door of her house, was taken to Saint-Roch. The church was hung
Ferragus |
