| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon: blighted, but he may find himself saddled for ever with a sorry
bargain.[3]
[2] Or, "the milk teeth," i.e. is more than five years old. See
Morgan, p. 126.
[3] Lit. "a horse that has lost his milk teeth cannot be said to
gladden his owner's mind with hopes, and is not so easily disposed
of."
Given that the fact of youth is well established, let there be no
mistake about another matter: how does he take the bit into his mouth
and the headstall[4] over his ears? There need be little ambiguity on
this score, if the purchaser will see the bit inserted and again
On Horsemanship |
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: and exhausting the air from it. [I never saw the accursed trick
performed. LAUS DEO!] There comes a time when the souls of human
beings, women, perhaps, more even than men, begin to faint for the
atmosphere of the affections they were made to breathe. Then it is
that Society places its transparent bell-glass over the young woman
who is to be the subject of one of its fatal experiments. The
element by which only the heart lives is sucked out of her
crystalline prison. Watch her through its transparent walls; - her
bosom is heaving; but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle,
compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the "Book of
Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Love and Friendship by Jane Austen: all my Labour thrown away. Imagine how great the Dissapointment
must be to me, when you consider that after having laboured both
by Night and by Day, in order to get the Wedding dinner ready by
the time appointed, after having roasted Beef, Broiled Mutton,
and Stewed Soup enough to last the new-married Couple through the
Honey-moon, I had the mortification of finding that I had been
Roasting, Broiling and Stewing both the Meat and Myself to no
purpose. Indeed my dear Freind, I never remember suffering any
vexation equal to what I experienced on last Monday when my
sister came running to me in the store-room with her face as
White as a Whipt syllabub, and told me that Hervey had been
Love and Friendship |
