| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: than the incident in London streets which I promised to tell you in full
when we should reach the time for it. The time is now.
In a hospital at no great distance from San Francisco, a wounded American
soldier said to one who sat beside him, that never would he go to Europe
to fight anybody again--except the English. Them he would like to fight;
and to the astonished visitor he told his reason. He, it appeared, was
one of our Americans who marched through London streets on that day when
the eyes of London looked for the first time upon the Yankees at last
arrived to bear a hand to England and her Allies. From the mob came a
certain taunt: "You silly ass."
It was, as you will observe, an unflattering interpretation of our
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: the Salmon, the Grayling, and Trout, and all fish that live in clear and
sharp streams, are made by their mother Nature of such exact shape and
pleasant colours purposely to invite us to a joy and contentedness in
feasting with her. Whether this is a truth or not, is not my purpose to
dispute: but 'tis certain, all that write of the Umber declare him to be
very medicinable. And Gesner says, that the fat of an Umber or
Grayling, being set, with a little honey, a day or two in the sun, in a
little glass, is very excellent against redness or swarthiness, or anything
that breeds in the eyes. Salvian takes him to be called Umber from his
swift swimming, or gliding out of sight more like a shadow or a ghost
than a fish. Much more might be said both of his smell and taste: but I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: the eighteenth century. It is certain that the old gentleman, who had
lived in days gone by with that feminine nation now as much forgotten
as many other great things,--like the Jesuits, the Buccaneers, the
Abbes, and the Farmers-General,--had acquired an irresistible good-
humor, a kindly ease, a laisser-aller devoid of egotism, the self-
effacement of Jupiter with Alcmene, of the king intending to be duped,
who casts his thunderbolts to the devil, wants his Olympus full of
follies, little suppers, feminine profusions--but with Juno out of the
way, be it understood.
In spite of his old green damask dressing-gown and the bareness of the
room in which he sat, where the floor was covered with a shabby
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