| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: and fungi gather on sickly trees, not thriving ones; and the odious
parasites which fasten on the human frame choose that which is
already enfeebled. Mr. Walker, the hygeian humorist, declared that
he had such a healthy skin it was impossible for any impurity to
stick to it, and maintained that it was an absurdity to wash a face
which was of necessity always clean. I don't know how much fancy
there was in this; but there is no fancy in saying that the
lassitude of tired-out operatives, and the languor of imaginative
natures in their periods of collapse, and the vacuity of minds
untrained to labor and discipline, fit the soul and body for the
germination of the seeds of intemperance.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: But their wild exultation was suddenly checked
When the jailer informed them, with tears,
Such a sentence would have not the slightest effect,
As the pig had been dead for some years.
The Judge left the Court, looking deeply disgusted:
But the Snark, though a little aghast,
As the lawyer to whom the defense was entrusted,
Went bellowing on to the last.
Thus the Barrister dreamed, while the bellowing seemed
To grow every moment more clear:
Till he woke to the knell of a furious bell,
The Hunting of the Snark |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: whether, supposing you have no other objection, it would be worth
while to begin the series in the middle of a volume, or desirable
to delay the whole matter until the beginning of another year.
Now supposing that the CONS have it, and you refuse my offer, let
me make another proposal, which you will be very inclined to refuse
at the first off-go, but which I really believe might in time come
to something. You know how the penny papers have their answers to
correspondents. Why not do something of the same kind for the
'culchawed'? Why not get men like Stimson, Brownell, Professor
James, Goldwin Smith, and others who will occur to you more readily
than to me, to put and to answer a series of questions of
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