| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: to suit the person addressed. But three forms being far too few for
the needs of so elaborate a politeness, these are supplemented by
many interpolated grades.
Terms of respect are applied not only to those mortals who are held
in estimation higher than their fellows, but to all men
indiscriminately as well. The grammatical attitude of the
individual toward the speaker is of as much importance as his social
standing, I being beneath contempt, and you above criticism.
Honorifics are used not only on all possible occasions for courtesy,
but at times, it would seem, upon impossible ones; for in some
instances the most subtle diagnosis fails to reveal in them a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: Colonel Gordon McCabe. I once crossed the ocean with him on a
stream of stories that reached from Liverpool to New York. He did
not talk in the least like a book. He talked like a Virginian.
When Montaigne mentions GAYETY as the third clement of satisfying
discourse, I fancy he does not mean mere fun, though that has its
value at the right time and place. But there is another quality
which is far more valuable and always fit. Indeed it underlies the
best fun and makes it wholesome. It is cheerfulness, the temper
which makes the best of things and squeezes the little drops of
honey even out of thistle-blossoms. I think this is what Montaigne
meant. Certainly it is what he had.
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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: Saw the form of Pau-Puk-Keewis
Glide into the soft blue shadow
Of the pine-trees of the forest;
Toward the squares of white beyond it,
Toward an opening in the forest.
Like a wind it rushed and panted,
Bending all the boughs before it,
And behind it, as the rain comes,
Came the steps of Hiawatha.
To a lake with many islands
Came the breathless Pau-Puk-Keewis,
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