| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: leaving the locksmith's house made the best of his way to the
Crooked Billet, and there inquired for his friend the serjeant,
who, expecting no man less, received him with open arms. In the
course of five minutes after his arrival at that house of
entertainment, he was enrolled among the gallant defenders of his
native land; and within half an hour, was regaled with a steaming
supper of boiled tripe and onions, prepared, as his friend assured
him more than once, at the express command of his most Sacred
Majesty the King. To this meal, which tasted very savoury after
his long fasting, he did ample justice; and when he had followed it
up, or down, with a variety of loyal and patriotic toasts, he was
Barnaby Rudge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: were a prince, I would hire or buy a private literary tea-pot, in
which I would steep all the leaves of new books that promised well.
The infusion would do for me without the vegetable fibre. You
understand me; I would have a person whose sole business should be
to read day and night, and talk to me whenever I wanted him to. I
know the man I would have: a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive
fellow; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full of books
about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts
and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels, and
the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in
new costume; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an epithet
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare: bounced and tumbled? they say they're half fish, half flesh:
a plague on them, they ne'er come but I look to be washed.
Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.
FIRST FISHERMAN.
Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones: I
can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly as to a whale;
a' plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at
last devours them all at a mouthful. such whales have I heard
on o' the land, who never leave gaping till they they've
swallowed the whole parish, church, steeple, bells, and all.
PERICLES. [Aside.]
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