| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: we think that if rail fences are pulled down, and stone walls piled
up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our
fates decided. If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot
go to Tierra del Fuego this summer: but you may go to the land of
infernal fire nevertheless. The universe is wider than our views of
it.
Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like
curious passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors
picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the home of our
correspondent. Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing, and the
doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: water . . ."
"My good friend, you really touch me. I have sworn that a commission
shall sit on the Marquis. Why, here is even a long-saved tear to thank
you."
"But," Bianchon went on, "I do not promise to succeed as you wish with
Jean-Jules Popinot. You do not know him. However, I will take him to
see your Marquise the day after to-morrow; she may get round him if
she can. I doubt it. If all the truffles, all the Duchesses, all the
mistresses, and all the charmers in Paris were there in the full bloom
of their beauty; if the King promised him the PRAIRIE, and the
Almighty gave him the Order of Paradise with the revenues of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: Lastly, there still remains the Pope's bag of impostures
concerning foolish and childish articles, as, the dedication
of churches, the baptism of bells, the baptism of the
altarstone, and the inviting of sponsors to these rites, who
would make donations towards them. Such baptizing is a
reproach and mockery of Holy Baptism, hence should not be
tolerated. Furthermore, concerning the consecration of
wax-tapers, palm-branches, cakes, oats, [herbs,] spices, etc.,
which indeed, cannot be called consecrations, but are sheer
mockery and fraud. And such deceptions there are without
number, which we commend for adoration to their god and to
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