| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: estimable and freckled; and he had chills and fever when I made my
proposition.
"At five o'clock?" says he, "for a thousand dollars? Please don't wake
me up! Well, you /are/ the rich uncle retired from the spice business
in India! I'll buy out old Crosby and run the store myself."
We went inside and got old man Crosby apart and explained it. I wrote
my check for a thousand dollars and handed it to him. If Eddie and
Rebosa married each other at five he was to turn the money over to
them.
And then I gave 'em my blessing, and went to wander in the wildwood
for a season. I sat on a log and made cogitations on life and old age
Heart of the West |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag --
It's so elegant
So intelligent 130
'What shall I do now? What shall I do?'
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
'With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
'What shall we ever do?'
The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
The Waste Land |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: vehicle and clinging tightly to the roof, as I did. He either
miscalculated in some way, or he slipped; how it happened, I do
not know, but the coach fell over upon him, and he was crushed
under it.
We carried him into a peasant's cottage, and there, amid the
moans wrung from him by horrible sufferings, he contrived to give
me a commission--a sacred task, in that it was laid upon me by a
dying man's last wish. Poor boy, all through his agony he was
torturing himself in his young simplicity of heart with the
thought of the painful shock to his mistress when she should
suddenly read of his death in a newspaper. He begged me to go
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