| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: of military officers, or of authors who have written on a
particular subject, I am reminded once more that there is nothing
in a name. The name Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it
to my ears more human than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat.
As the names of the Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours to
them. It is as if they had been named by the child's
rigmarole,--IERY FIERY ICHERY VAN, TITTLE-TOL-TAN. I see in my
mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to
each the herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in his own
dialect. The names of men are, of course, as cheap and
meaningless as BOSE and TRAY, the names of dogs.
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde: boil the kettle."
So they piled the faggots together, and put the Rocket on top, and
lit the fire.
"This is magnificent," cried the Rocket, "they are going to let me
off in broad day-light, so that every one can see me."
"We will go to sleep now," they said, "and when we wake up the
kettle will be boiled"; and they lay down on the grass, and shut
their eyes.
The Rocket was very damp, so he took a long time to burn. At last,
however, the fire caught him.
"Now I am going off!" he cried, and he made himself very stiff and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling beneath; and he beheld
himself bestriding a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels,
setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee, --or the Lord knows where!
When he entered the house, the conquest of his heart was
complete. It was one of those spacious farmhouses, with high-
ridged but lowly sloping roofs, built in the style handed down
from the first Dutch settlers; the low projecting eaves forming a
piazza along the front, capable of being closed up in bad
weather. Under this were hung flails, harness, various utensils
of husbandry, and nets for fishing in the neighboring river.
Benches were built along the sides for summer use; and a great
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
