| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: to be attached to the stove-pipe and operated by the heat;
small Napoleon, done in wax; spread-open daguerreotypes
of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and friends,
in all attitudes but customary ones; no templed portico at back,
and manufactured landscape stretching away in the distance--
that came in later, with the photograph; all these vague figures
lavishly chained and ringed--metal indicated and secured
from doubt by stripes and splashes of vivid gold bronze;
all of them too much combed, too much fixed up; and all of them
uncomfortable in inflexible Sunday-clothes of a pattern which
the spectator cannot realize could ever have been in fashion;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: balsamic beds or in peasants' ricks, eating of their black, hospitable
bread, drinking from streams or the willing cup of the goatherd.
At length he crossed a great bridge and set his foot within the
smiling city that has crushed or crowned more poets than all the rest
of the world. His breath came quickly as Paris sang to him in a little
undertone her vital chant of greeting--the hum of voice and foot and
wheel.
High up under the eaves of an old house in the Rue Conti, David paid
for lodging, and set himself, in a wooden chair, to his poems. The
street, once sheltering citizens of import and consequence, was now
given over to those who ever follow in the wake of decline.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: dare tell me, sir--he was afraid of my scolding him. And in the
meantime the disease was running its course. When he realized
that he had it, he went secretly to one of the quacks, who robbed
him, and didn't cure him. You know how it is, sir."
"Yes, I know," said the doctor.
"Such things ought not to be permitted," cried the old man.
"What is our government about that it allows such things to go
on? Take the conditions there at the college where my poor boy
was ruined. At the very gates of the building these women are
waiting for the lads! Ought they to be permitted to debauch
young boys only fifteen years old? Haven't we got police enough
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