| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: martyrs compared to Rowley; but they were in a frolicsome and
rollicking humour that promised danger as we approached the town.
They sang songs, they ran races, they fenced with their walking-
sticks and umbrellas; and, in spite of this violent exercise, the
fun grew only the more extravagant with the miles they traversed.
Their drunkenness was deep-seated and permanent, like fire in a
peat; or rather - to be quite just to them - it was not so much to
be called drunkenness at all, as the effect of youth and high
spirits - a fine night, and the night young, a good road under
foot, and the world before you!
I had left them once somewhat unceremoniously; I could not attempt
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: sound, and whether it was rightly accounted for as above.
Mingling with these inarticulate sounds in the low murmur of
memory, are the echoes of certain voices I have heard at rare
intervals. I grieve to say it, but our people, I think, have not
generally agreeable voices. The marrowy organisms, with skins that
shed water like the backs of ducks, with smooth surfaces neatly
padded beneath, and velvet linings to their singing-pipes, are not
so common among us as that other pattern of humanity with angular
outlines and plane surfaces, and integuments, hair like the fibrous
covering of a cocoa-nut in gloss and suppleness as well as color,
and voices at once thin and strenuous, - acidulous enough to
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum: breast just then, for Tik-tok came in and tramped up to the throne on
his flat copper feet.
"I am all wound up and work-ing fine-ly," said the clock-work
man to Dorothy.
"I can hear him tick," declared Button-Bright.
"You are quite the polished gentleman," said the Tin Woodman. "Stand
up here beside the shaggy man, Tik-tok, and help receive the company."
Dorothy placed soft cushions in a corner for Billina and her chicks,
and had just returned to the Throne and seated herself when the
playing of the royal band outside the palace announced the approach of
distinguished guests.
The Road to Oz |
