| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: it), lead the youth to equal the industry and temperance of thy
early youth, what a blessing with that class would such a work be!
I know of no character living, nor many of them put together,
who has so much in his power as thyself to promote a greater spirit
of industry and early attention to business, frugality, and temperance
with the American youth. Not that I think the work would have no
other merit and use in the world, far from it; but the first is
of such vast importance that I know nothing that can equal it."
The foregoing letter and the minutes accompanying it being shown
to a friend, I received from him the following:
Letter from Mr. Benjamin Vaughan.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: in Arkham. We had not been settled a week before we got an accident
victim on the very night of burial, and made it open its eyes
with an amazingly rational expression before the solution failed.
It had lost an arm -- if it had been a perfect body we might have
succeeded better. Between then and the next January we secured
three more; one total failure, one case of marked muscular motion,
and one rather shivery thing -- it rose of itself and uttered
a sound. Then came a period when luck was poor; interments fell
off, and those that did occur were of specimens either too diseased
or too maimed for use. We kept track of all the deaths and their
circumstances with systematic care.
Herbert West: Reanimator |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: seen me -- I am done for now; it is all up. . . .' "
And so on in the same style. Or he will begin like this:
"I was yesterday at our friend Z. Z----'s public lecture. I
wonder how it is our alma mater -- don't speak of it after dark
-- dare display in public such noodles and patent dullards as
that Z. Z---- Why, he is a European fool! Upon my word, you could
not find another like him all over Europe! He lectures -- can you
imagine? -- as though he were sucking a sugar-stick -- sue, sue,
sue; . . . he is in a nervous funk; he can hardly decipher his
own manuscript; his poor little thoughts crawl along like a
bishop on a bicycle, and, what's worse, you can never make out
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