| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: back to me the memory of a girl's puzzled eyes under the brim of a
flopping hat, the haunting suspicion of the sleepless nights that
followed.
Just then I was determined that my companion should not stray back
to the wreck, and to that end I was determinedly facetious.
"Do you know that it is Sunday?" she asked suddenly, "and that we
are actually ragged?"
"Never mind that," I retorted. "All Baltimore is divided on Sunday
into three parts, those who rise up and go to church, those who
rise up and read the newspapers, and those who don't rise up. The
first are somewhere between the creed and the sermon, and we need
The Man in Lower Ten |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: some who ought to know better doing the same thing now; and others, who
more wisely believe them to be strictly physical and nervous, so utterly
unable to give reasons for them, that they feel it expedient to ignore
them for awhile, till they know more about those physical phenomena
which can be put under some sort of classification, and attributed to
some sort of inductive law.
But again. These ecstasies, cures, and so forth, brought them rapidly
back to the old priestcrafts. The Egyptian priests, the Babylonian and
Jewish sorcerers, had practised all this as a trade for ages, and
reduced it to an art. It was by sleeping in the temples of the deities,
after due mesmeric manipulations, that cures were even then effected.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: antiquated prejudice that demanded a third wheel and a black coat
from a clerical rider. He looked at Phipps and Hoopdriver for a
moment, then extending his hand towards the latter, he waved it
up and down three times, saying, "Tchak, tchak, tchak," very
deliberately as he did so. Then with a concluding "Ugh!" and a
gesture of repugnance he passed on into the dining-room from
which the voice of Miss Mergle was distinctly audible remarking
that the weather was extremely hot even for the time of year.
This expression of extreme disapprobation had a very demoralizing
effect upon Hoopdriver, a demoralization that was immediately
completed by the advent of the massive Widgery.
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