| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: treasured, thin, and straggling moustache, in spite of your
memory of the coarse words he had used that day, that the man
before you was, after all, only a little child asleep.
THE DREAMS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER
XII
In spite of the drawn blinds and the darkness, you have just seen
Mr. Hoopdriver's face peaceful in its beauty sleep in the little,
plain bedroom at the very top of the Yellow Hammer Coffee Tavern
at Guildford. That was before midnight. As the night progressed
he was disturbed by dreams.
After your first day of cycling one dream is inevitable. A memory
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: a habit learned in their babyhood. For seven years the sincere
petition had been put up every morning on their mother's bed, and
begun and ended by a kiss. Then the two brothers went through their
morning toilet as scrupulously as any pretty woman; doubtless they had
been trained in habits of minute attention to the person, so necessary
to health of body and mind, habits in some sort conducive to a sense
of wellbeing. Conscientiously they went through their duties, so
afraid were they lest their mother should say when she kissed them at
breakfast-time, "My darling children, where can you have been to have
such black finger-nails already?" Then the two went out into the
garden and shook off the dreams of the night in the morning air and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers.
Stretched on on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald)
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
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