| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: literary work, some reading and writing to do, so that I must
be quiet, and yet if possible a great deal in the open air--
that's why I have felt that a garden is really indispensable.
I appeal to your own experience," I went on, smiling.
"Now can't I look at yours?"
"I don't know, I don't understand," the poor woman murmured,
planted there and letting her embarrassed eyes wander all
over my strangeness.
"I mean only from one of those windows--such grand ones
as you have here--if you will let me open the shutters."
And I walked toward the back of the house. When I had advanced
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: in the world. By the United States law, no man could become
a pilot unless two duly licensed pilots signed his application;
and now there was nobody outside of the association competent
to sign. Consequently the making of pilots was at an end.
Every year some would die and others become incapacitated by age
and infirmity; there would be no new ones to take their places.
In time, the association could put wages up to any figure it chose;
and as long as it should be wise enough not to carry the thing
too far and provoke the national government into amending
the licensing system, steamboat owners would have to submit,
since there would be no help for it.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: Thought, Christian Science, Theosophy, Vedanta, Bahaism, and the other sparks
from the one New Light. The subscription is but ten dollars a year, and for
this mere pittance the members receive not only the monthly magazine, Pearls
of Healing, but the privilege of sending right to the president, our revered
Mother Dobbs, any questions regarding spiritual progress, matrimonial
problems, health and well-being questions, financial difficulties, and--"
They listened to her with adoring attention. They looked genteel. They looked
ironed-out. They coughed politely, and crossed their legs with quietness, and
in expensive linen handkerchiefs they blew their noses with a delicacy
altogether optimistic and refined.
As for Babbitt, he sat and suffered.
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