| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg _pate_.
LL.D. Letters indicating the degree _Legumptionorum Doctor_, one
learned in laws, gifted with legal gumption. Some suspicion is cast
upon this derivation by the fact that the title was formerly _LL.d._,
and conferred only upon gentlemen distinguished for their wealth. At
the date of this writing Columbia University is considering the
expediency of making another degree for clergymen, in place of the old
D.D. -- _Damnator Diaboli_. The new honor will be known as _Sanctorum
Custus_, and written _$$c_. The name of the Rev. John Satan has been
suggested as a suitable recipient by a lover of consistency, who
points out that Professor Harry Thurston Peck has long enjoyed the
The Devil's Dictionary |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant,
their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the
rushing gust--but then without those doors there DID stand the
lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There
was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter
struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment
she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold,--
then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person
of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies,
bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he
had anticipated.
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: altogether small, the mere taproot of her extended empire:
Scotland, again, which alone the Scottish boy adopts in his
imagination, is but a little part of that, and avowedly cold,
sterile and unpopulous. It is not so for nothing. I once seemed
to have perceived in an American boy a greater readiness of
sympathy for lands that are great, and rich, and growing, like his
own. It proved to be quite otherwise: a mere dumb piece of boyish
romance, that I had lacked penetration to divine. But the error
serves the purpose of my argument; for I am sure, at least, that
the heart of young Scotland will be always touched more nearly by
paucity of number and Spartan poverty of life.
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