| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: of the lesser lights. I have put down my pen to answer a note, just
brought in, to dine next Thursday with the Dowager Countess of
Charleville, where we were last week, in the evening. She is
eighty-four (tell this to Grandmamma) and likes still to surround
herself with BEAUX and BELLES ESPRITS, and as her son and daughter
reside with her, this is still easy . . . The old lady talks French
as fast as possible, and troubles me somewhat by talking it to me,
forgetting that a foreign minister's wife can talk English . . .
Your father likes to be here. He has copying going on in the State
Paper Office and British Museum, and his heart is full of
manuscripts. It is the first thought, I believe, whoever he sees,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: Once a year, on Commencement-day,
If you'll only take the pains to stay,
You'll see the President in the CHAIR,
Likewise the Governor sitting there.
The President rises; both old and young
May hear his speech in a foreign tongue,
The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear,
Is this: Can I keep this old arm-chair?
And then his Excellency bows,
As much as to say that he allows.
The Vice-Gub. next is called by name;
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: in an idle sort of way doing the most horrid things with his features!
The particular horrid thing he did was with his nose. He did it
just as though he was idle and wanted to amuse himself. First of all
it was a short, blobby nose, and then suddenly he shot it out
like a telescope, and then out it flew and became thinner and thinner
until it was like a long, red, flexible whip. Like a thing in
a nightmare it was! He flourished it about and flung it forth
as a fly-fisher flings his line.
My instant thought was that Gip mustn't see him. I turned about,
and there was Gip quite preoccupied with the shopman, and thinking
no evil. They were whispering together and looking at me. Gip was
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