| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: churchyards, together with divers hints on the subject of
patent-iron coffins. I have heard the question discussed in all
its bearings as to the legality of prohibiting the latter on
account of their durability. The feuds occasioned by these
societies have happily died of late; but they were for a long
time prevailing themes of controversy, the people of Little
Britain being extremely solicitous of funereal honors and of
lying comfortably in their graves.
Besides these two funeral societies there is a third of quite a
different cast, which tends to throw the sunshine of good-
humor over the whole neighborhood. It meets once a week at
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: them questions as they went along.
I need not mention what a horrid delusion this was, or what it
tended to; but there was no remedy for it till the plague itself put an
end to it all - and, I suppose, cleared the town of most of those
calculators themselves. One mischief was, that if the poor people
asked these mock astrologers whether there would be a plague or no,
they all agreed in general to answer 'Yes', for that kept up their trade.
And had the people not been kept in a fright about that, the wizards
would presently have been rendered useless, and their craft had been
at an end. But they always talked to them of such-and-such influences
of the stars, of the conjunctions of such-and-such planets, which must
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo
Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass
With all fair theories only made to gild
A stormless summer.' 'Let the Princess judge
Of that' she said: 'farewell, Sir--and to you.
I shudder at the sequel, but I go.'
'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I rejoined,
'The fifth in line from that old Florian,
Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall
(The gaunt old Baron with his beetle brow
Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights)
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