| 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: "It is only a poplar!" and so much harder to replace its living
cone than to build a granite obelisk!
I must tell you about some of my tree-wives. I was at one period
of my life much devoted to the young lady-population of Rhode
Island, a small, but delightful State in the neighborhood of
Pawtucket. The number of inhabitants being not very large, I had
leisure, during my visits to the Providence Plantations, to inspect
the face of the country in the intervals of more fascinating
studies of physiognomy. I heard some talk of a great elm a short
distance from the locality just mentioned. "Let us see the great
elm," - I said, and proceeded to find it, - knowing that it was on
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: He crossed the first room, in which were a crowd of persons whom civil
suits of one kind or another summoned before the magistrate. Without
pausing in that waiting-room, la Peyrade pushed on to the office
adjoining that of Dutocq. There he found Cerizet at a shabby desk of
blackened wood, at which another clerk, then absent, occupied the
opposite seat.
Seeing his visitor, Cerizet cast a savage look at him and said,
without rising, or suspending the copy of the judgment he was then
engrossing:--
"You here, Sieur la Peyrade? You have been doing fine things for your
friend Thuillier!"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: but no one more than two or three. It was among these
folk that first arose our amazing jealousies and envies. Now
and again the masters must take part. Not the Viceroy
who in such matters went very stately, but certain of our
gentlemen. Loud and angry voices rose under the palms,
under a sky of pale gold.
Sent for, I found the Admiral lying on his bed, not yet
in his stone house but in a rich and large pavilion brought
out especially for the Viceroy and now pitched upon the
river bank, under palms. I came to him past numbers out
of that thirty. Idle here; they certainly were idle here!
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