| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Under the Andes by Rex Stout: The passage was not a long one. At its end we turned to the
right, following our guide. Once I looked back and saw behind us
the crowd that had surrounded us in the cave. There was no way but
obedience.
We had advanced perhaps a hundred, possibly two hundred yards
along the second passage when our guide suddenly halted. We stood
beside him.
He turned sharply to the left, and, beckoning to us to follow,
began to descend a narrow stairway which led directly from the
passage. It was steep, and the darkness allowed a glimpse only of
black walls and the terrace immediately beneath our feet; so we
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: The Chorus of Old Men in "Aegeus"
Ye gods that have a home beyond the world,
Ye that have eyes for all man's agony,
Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen, --
Look with a just regard,
And with an even grace,
Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king,
Here on a suffering world where men grow old
And wander like sad shadows till, at last,
Out of the flare of life,
Out of the whirl of years,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: ment of his ideals from those of his wife neces-
sarily affected their conjugal relations, and the
decline of mutual sympathy inevitably induced
physical alienation. The stress of mental anguish
arising from these conditions found vent in pages
of his diaries (much of which I have been per-
mitted to read), pages containing matter too sa-
cred and intimate to use. The diaries shed a
flood of light on Tolstoy's ideas, motives, and
manner of life, and have modified some of my
opinions, explaining many hitherto obscure points,
The Forged Coupon |
