| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an
errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some
invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one
small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that
thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned
round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the
handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this
unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase
and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who's to
doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a
mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the air smells now, as
Moby Dick |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: in those towns until death.
The other tradition is that the significant features of all
villages are whiskers, iron dogs upon lawns, gold bricks,
checkers, jars of gilded cat-tails, and shrewd comic old men
who are known as "hicks" and who ejaculate "Waal I swan."
This altogether admirable tradition rules the vaudeville stage,
facetious illustrators, and syndicated newspaper humor, but
out of actual life it passed forty years ago. Carol's small
town thinks not in hoss-swapping but in cheap motor cars,
telephones, ready-made clothes, silos, alfalfa, kodaks, phonographs,
leather-upholstered Morris chairs, bridge-prizes, oil-
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: GUIDO
[aside]
Surely a toad sits on his lips, and spills its venom there.
DUKE
See thou hast enemies,
Else will the world think very little of thee;
It is its test of power; yet see thou show'st
A smiling mask of friendship to all men,
Until thou hast them safely in thy grip,
Then thou canst crush them.
GUIDO
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