| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: size. He's the interestingest of them all. People have
so much to say about an ant's strength, and an ele-
phant's, and a locomotive's. Shucks, they don't begin
with a flea. He can lift two or three hundred times his
own weight. And none of them can come anywhere
near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his
own, and is very particular, and you can't fool him;
his instinct, or his judgment, or whatever it is, is per-
fectly sound and clear, and don't ever make a mistake.
People think all humans are alike to a flea. It ain't
so. There's folks that he won't go near, hungry or
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: Mrs. Meldrum, whose sense of proportion was not the least of her
merits, had no idea of boring the world with the ups and downs of
her pensioner. The poor girl grew dusky and dim, a small fitful
memory, a regret tempered by the comfortable consciousness of how
kind Mrs. Meldrum would always be to her. I was professionally
more preoccupied than I had ever been, and I had swarms of pretty
faces in my eyes and a chorus of loud tones in my ears. Geoffrey
Dawling had on his return to England written me two or three
letters: his last information had been that he was going into the
figures of rural illiteracy. I was delighted to receive it and had
no doubt that if he should go into figures they would, as they are
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: took him by the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine.
"Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving?
where go ye now? But if the currents carry ye to those sweet
Antilles where the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye
do one little errand for me? Seek out one Pip, who's now been
missing long: I think he's in those far Antilles. If ye find him,
then comfort him; for he must be very sad; for look! he's left his
tambourine behind;--I found it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now, Queequeg,
die; and I'll beat ye your dying march."
"I have heard," murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, "that in
violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues;
Moby Dick |
