| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: tervals by the pacific exchange of a few words. I
came nearly every evening. Hermann I would find
in his shirt sleeves. As soon as he returned from
the shore on board his ship he commenced operations
by taking off his coat; then he put on his head an
embroidered round cap with a tassel, and changed
his boots for a pair of cloth slippers. Afterwards
he smoked at the cabin-door, looking at his children
with an air of civic virtue, till they got caught one
after another and put to bed in various staterooms.
Lastly, we would drink some beer in the cabin, which
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: Compare the American who said we were going to buy England for a summer
resort with the Englishman who said that when all other entertainment in
London failed, you could always listen to the Americans eat. Crudity,
"freshness" on our side, arrogance, toploftiness on theirs: such is one
generalization I would have you disengage from my anecdotes.
Second. The English are blunter than we. They talk to us as they would
talk to themselves. The way we take it reveals that we are too often
thin-skinned. Recent people are apt to be thin-skinned and self-conscious
and self-assertive, while those with a thousand years of tradition would
have thicker hides and would never feel it necessary to assert
themselves. Give an Englishman as good as he gives you, and you are
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: And they painted on the grave-posts
On the graves yet unforgotten,
Each his own ancestral Totem,
Each the symbol of his household;
Figures of the Bear and Reindeer,
Of the Turtle, Crane, and Beaver,
Each inverted as a token
That the owner was departed,
That the chief who bore the symbol
Lay beneath in dust and ashes.
And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets,
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