| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: Schmucke, but Schmucke could not bring himself to loosen the grasp of
the hand that grew tighter and tighter. Pons seemed to think that he
was slipping over the edge of a precipice and must catch at something
to save himself. But, as many know, the dying are haunted by an
hallucination that leads them to snatch at things about them, like men
eager to save their most precious possessions from a fire. Presently
Pons released Schmucke to clutch at the bed-clothes, dragging them and
huddling them about himself with a hasty, covetous movement
significant and painful to see.
"What will you do, left alone with your dead friend?" asked M. l'Abbe
Duplanty when Schmucke came to the door. "You have not Mme. Cibot
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest --
I too awaited the expected guest. 230
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
The Waste Land |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: letters on Valentine's Day, burn the pope on the fifth of
November, and kiss all the girls under the mistletoe at
Christmas. Roast beef and plum pudding are also held in
superstitious veneration, and port and sherry maintain their
grounds as the only true English wines; all others being
considered vile, outlandish beverages.
Little Britain has its long catalogue of city wonders, which its
inhabitants consider the wonders of the world: such as the
great bell of St. Paul's, which sours all the beer when it tolls;
the figures that strike the hours at St. Dunstan's clock; the
Monument; the lions in the Tower; and the wooden giants in
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