| 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: that his argument was ABSURD; one maintaining it to be a perfectly
admissible logical term, as proved by the phrase "reductio ad
absurdum;" the rest badgering him as a conversational bully.
Mighty little we troubled ourselves for PADUS, the Po, "a river
broader and more rapid than the Rhone," and the times when Hannibal
led his grim Africans to its banks, and his elephants thrust their
trunks into the yellow waters over which that pendulum ferry-boat
was swinging back and forward every ten minutes!
- Here are some of those reminiscences, with morals prefixed, or
annexed, or implied.
Lively emotions very commonly do not strike us full in front, but
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum: "Oh," said Button-Bright.
"Bow-wow!" said Toto.
But the musicker was still breathing his constant
Oom, pom-pom; Oom pom-pom--
and it seemed to jar on the shaggy man's nerves.
"Stop it, can't you?" he cried angrily; "or breathe in a whisper;
or put a clothes-pin on your nose. Do something, anyhow!"
But the fat one, with a sad look, sang this answer:
Music hath charms, and it may
Soothe even the savage, they say;
So if savage you feel
The Road to Oz |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: Folklore, published by Baron Vitali, Interpreter at the
Italian legation, which, on examination, proved to be exactly
what I wanted. He had collected about two hundred and
fifty rhymes, had made a literal--not metrical--translation
and had issued them in book form without expurgation.
Others learned of my collection, and rhymes began to come
to me from all parts of the empire. Dr. Arthur H. Smith,
the well-known author of "Chinese Characteristics" gave
me a collection of more than three hundred made in Shantung,
among which were rhymes similar to those we had
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