| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: get ready for it? Do you remember the bulletin boards? Did you grow, as I
did, so restless that you would step out of your office to see if
anything new had happened during the last sixty minutes--would stop as
you went to lunch and stop as you came back? We knew from the faces of
our friends what our own faces were like. In company we pumped up
liveliness, but in the street, alone with our apprehensions--do you
remember? For our future's sake may everybody remember, may nobody
forget!
What the news was upon a certain forenoon memorable to me, I do not
recall, and this is of no consequence; good or bad, the stream of by-
passers clotted thickly to read it as the man chalked it line upon line
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: have a little supper. Mrs. Moreen threw out more hints about the
changes that were to be looked for, but she was such a mixture of
smiles and shudders - she confessed she was very nervous - that he
couldn't tell if she were in high feather or only in hysterics. If
the family was really at last going to pieces why shouldn't she
recognise the necessity of pitching Morgan into some sort of
lifeboat? This presumption was fostered by the fact that they were
established in luxurious quarters in the capital of pleasure; that
was exactly where they naturally WOULD be established in view of
going to pieces. Moreover didn't she mention that Mr. Moreen and
the others were enjoying themselves at the opera with Mr. Granger,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: tons, the others, as they appear now, were at least five or six
times as big, and must weigh in proportion; and therefore I must
think their judgment much nearer the case who judge the upright
stones at sixteen tons or thereabouts (supposing them to stand a
great way into the earth, as it is not doubted but they do), and
the coronets or cross-stones at about two tons, which is very large
too, and as much as their bulk can be thought to allow.
Upon the whole, we must take them as our ancestors have done--
namely, for an erection or building so ancient that no history has
handed down to us the original. As we find it, then, uncertain, we
must leave it so. It is indeed a reverend piece of antiquity, and
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