| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: night, anywhere or anyhow, and I guarantee nobody won't hear a squeal.
It's all in the way you grab hold of 'em and carry 'em atterwards.
Some day,' goes on this gentle despoiler of pig-pens, 'I hope to
become reckernized as the champion shoat-stealer of the world.'
"'It's proper to be ambitious,' says I; 'and hog-stealing will do very
well for Mount Nebo; but in the outside world, Mr. Tatum, it would be
considered as crude a piece of business as a bear raid on Bay State
Gas. However, it will do as a guarantee of good faith. We'll go into
partnership. I've got a thousand dollars cash capital; and with that
homeward-plods atmosphere of yours we ought to be able to win out a
few shares of Soon Parted, preferred, in the money market.'
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest: The gladdest people living are the wholesome folks who make
A circle at the fireside that no power but death can break.
And the finest of conventions ever held beneath the sun
Are the little family gatherings when the busy day is done.
There are rich folk, there are poor folk, who imagine they are wise,
And they're very quick to shatter all the little family ties.
Each goes searching after pleasure in his own selected way,
Each with strangers likes to wander, and with strangers likes to play.
But it's bitterness they harvest, and it's empty joy they find,
For the children that are wisest are the stick-together kind.
There are some who seem to fancy that for gladness they must roam,
Just Folks |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: lesson I draw from this. Have forces in reserve. It was a
hundred to one, George, that I was right--a hundred to one. I
worked it out afterwards. And here we are spiked on the
off-chance. If I'd have only kept back a little, I'd have had it
on U.P. next day, like a shot, and come out on the rise. There
you are!"
His thoughts took a graver turn.
"It's where you'll bump up against Chance like this, George, that
you feel the need of religion. Your hard-and-fast scientific
men--your Spencers and Huxleys--they don't understand that. I
do. I've thought of it a lot lately--in bed and about. I was
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