| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: corner of the kitchen hearth. There's an old saying you may have heard
--'fussily decency averni'--which means it's an easy slide from the
street faker's dry goods box to a desk in Wall Street. We've took that
slide, but we didn't know exactly what was at the bottom of it. Now,
you ought to be wise, but you ain't. You've got New York wiseness,
which means that you judge a man by the outside of his clothes. That
ain't right. You ought to look at the lining and seams and the button-
holes. While we are waiting for the patrol wagon you might get out
your little stub pencil and take notes for another funny piece in the
paper."
And then Buck turns to me and says: "I don't care what Atterbury
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: to him too solemnly; they frightened and bewildered him.
Of course there was the great standard of morality, which forbade
that a man should get tipsy, play at billiards for money,
or cultivate his sensual consciousness; but what fear was there
that poor Clifford was going to run a tilt at any great standard?
It had, however, never occurred to Acton to dedicate the Baroness
Munster to the redemption of a refractory collegian.
The instrument, here, would have seemed to him quite too complex
for the operation. Felix, on the other hand, had spoken
in obedience to the belief that the more charming a woman is
the more numerous, literally, are her definite social uses.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: last, that she had a daughter, a daughter to save, a daughter for whom
to desire a noble life and the chastity she had not. Henceforth, happy
or not happy, opulent or beggared, she had in her heart a pure,
untainted sentiment, the highest of all human feelings because the
most disinterested. Love has its egotism, but motherhood has none. La
Marana was a mother like none other; for, in her total, her eternal
shipwreck, motherhood might still redeem her. To accomplish sacredly
through life the task of sending a pure soul to heaven, was not that a
better thing than a tardy repentance? was it not, in truth, the only
spotless prayer which she could lift to God?
So, when this daughter, when her Marie-Juana-Pepita (she would fain
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