| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: the leading tenor was in great demand at the homes of society
queens.
"Do you know," said Annette, petulantly, one evening, "I wish for
the old days at Pass Christian."
"So do I," he answered tenderly; "will you repeat them with me
next summer?"
"If I only could!" she gasped.
Still she might have been happy, had it not been for Madame
Dubeau,--Madame Dubeau, the flute-voiced leading soprano, who
wore the single dainty curl on her forehead, and thrilled her
audiences oftentimes more completely than the fisherman. Madame
 The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
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: we be more shy of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired of
blossoms or the night of stars? Look at Nature. She never wearies
of saying over her floral pater-noster. In the crevices of
Cyclopean walls, - in the dust where men lie, dust also, - on the
mounds that bury huge cities, the wreck of Nineveh and the Babel-
heap, - still that same sweet prayer and benediction. The Amen! of
Nature is always a flower.
Are you tired of my trivial personalities, - those splashes and
streaks of sentiment, sometimes perhaps of sentimentality, which
you may see when I show you my heart's corolla as if it were a
tulip? Pray, do not give yourself the trouble to fancy me an idiot
 The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: 2, p. 45-50.
I shall never forget that hideous summer sixteen
years ago, when like a noxious afrite from the halls of Eblis
typhoid stalked leeringly through Arkham. It is by that satanic
scourge that most recall the year, for truly terror brooded with
bat-wings over the piles of coffins in the tombs of Christchurch
Cemetery; yet for me there is a greater horror in that time --
a horror known to me alone now that Herbert West has disappeared.
West and I were doing post-graduate work in summer classes at
the medical school of Miskatonic University, and my friend had
attained a wide notoriety because of his experiments leading toward
 Herbert West: Reanimator |