| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: of his gown, you espied a fat capon hung round the monk's waist.
In Newman's intention what did the figure symbolize?
Did it mean that he was going to try to be as "high-toned" as the monk
looked at first, but that he feared he should succeed no better
than the friar, on a closer inspection, proved to have done?
It is not supposable that he intended a satire upon Babcock's
own asceticism, for this would have been a truly cynical stroke.
He made his late companion, at any rate, a very valuable little present.
Newman, on leaving Venice, went through the Tyrol to Vienna,
and then returned westward, through Southern Germany.
The autumn found him at Baden-Baden, where he spent several weeks.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: On my first day I had spent several hours in the vain effort to
catch something better than small grayling. The best time for the
trout was just approaching, as the broad light faded from the
stream; already they were beginning to feed, when I looked up from
the edge of a pool and saw the train rattling down the valley below
me. Under the circumstances the only thing to do was to go on
fishing. It was an even pool with steep banks, and the water ran
through it very straight and swift, some four feet deep and thirty
yards across. As the tail-fly reached the middle of the water, a
fine trout literally turned a somersault over it, but without
touching it. At the next cast he was ready, taking it with a rush
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: words may be purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose
or meaning; but even in that case it is still extraordinary, and
is a thing which no other bear can do. This imitation of speech,
taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of
tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind of bear. The
further study of it will be exceedingly interesting. Meantime I
will go off on a far expedition among the forests of the North and
make an exhaustive search. There must certainly be another one
somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it has company
of its own species. I will go straightway; but I will muzzle this
one first.
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