| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: "There was something he said that I might have challenged."
Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah
I remember a slice of lemon and a bitten macaroon.
Hysteria
As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and
being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a
talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at
each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her
throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter
with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked
cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: "If the lady and
Prufrock/Other Observations |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: experience. He and his forefathers, perhaps for a thousand years
and more, have been farming this country, reading Madam How's
books with very keen eyes, experimenting and watching, very
carefully and rationally; making mistakes often, and failing and
losing their crops and their money; but learning from their
mistakes, till their empiric knowledge, as it is called, helps
them to grow sometimes quite as good crops as if they had learned
agricultural chemistry.
What he meant by the chalk sweetening the land you would not
understand yet, and I can hardly tell you; for chemists are not
yet agreed how it happens. But he was right; and right, too, what
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: Orvieto and of Montefiascone, conveyed with the peculiar care needed
in moving them, Lachrymachristi and Giro,--all the heady liqueurs of
/la cara Patria/,--went to their brains with the intoxication alike of
the grape and of fond memory. At dessert the musician and the cook
both abjured every heresy; one was humming a /cavatina/ by Rossini,
and the other piling delicacies on his plate and washing them down
with Maraschino from Zara, to the prosperity of the French /cuisine/.
The Count took advantage of this happy frame of mind, and Gambara
allowed himself to be taken to the opera like a lamb.
At the first introductory notes Gambara's intoxication appeared to
clear away and make way for the feverish excitement which sometimes
Gambara |
