| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: live through youth and manhood, IN SPITE of the troubles we shall
groan over. - There was considerable prosing as to what old age can
do and can't. - True, but not new. Certainly, old folks can't
jump, - break the necks of their thigh-bones, (FEMORUM CERVICES,)
if they do; can't crack nuts with their teeth; can't climb a
greased pole (MALUM INUNCTUM SCANDERE NON POSSUNT); but they can
tell old stories and give you good advice; if they know what you
have made up your mind to do when you ask them. - All this is well
enough, but won't set the Tiber on fire (TIBERIM ACCENDERE
NEQUAQUAM POTEST.)
There were some clever things enough, (DICTA HAND INEPTA,) a few of
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: gate.
"TIENS! You have fear, Monsieur Leclere! Truly I had not thought
of that. It is strange. For so strong a man it is a little stupid
to be afraid. Good-night. I hear my father calling me. Perhaps
some one in the store who wants to be served. You must tell me
again what you are going to do with the new carriage. Good-night!"
She was laughing again. But it was a different laughter. Prosper,
at the gate, did not think it sounded like the running of a brook
over the stones. No, it was more the noise of the dry branches that
knock together in the wind. He did not hear the sigh that came as
she shut the door of the house, nor see how slowly she walked
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: moreover, once for all, by the fact that she had all the while not
appeared to feel the need of rebutting his charge of an idea within
her that she didn't dare to express--a charge uttered just before
one of the fullest of their later discussions ended. It had come
up for him then that she "knew" something and that what she knew
was bad--too bad to tell him. When he had spoken of it as visibly
so bad that she was afraid he might find it out, her reply had left
the matter too equivocal to be let alone and yet, for Marcher's
special sensibility, almost too formidable again to touch. He
circled about it at a distance that alternately narrowed and
widened and that still wasn't much affected by the consciousness in
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