The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: noticed that none of the old-time hunters like Cuninghame or Judd
wore shorts. The real reason is not that they are cool, but that
they are picturesque. Common belief to the contrary, your average
practical, matter-of-fact Englishman loves to dress up. I knew
one engaged in farming-picturesque farming-in our own West, who
used to appear at afternoon tea in a clean suit of blue overalls!
It is a harmless amusement. Our own youths do it, also,
substituting chaps for shorts, perhaps. I am not criticising the
spirit in them; but merely trying to keep mistaken shorts off
you.
For leg gear I found that nothing could beat our American
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about.
All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.
We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:
So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,
 Ballads |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: He often reflected, "Nev' forget how old Jake Offutt said a wise bird never
goes love-making in his own office or his own home. Start trouble. Sure.
But--"
In twenty-three years of married life he had peered uneasily at every graceful
ankle, every soft shoulder; in thought he had treasured them; but not once had
he hazarded respectability by adventuring. Now, as he calculated the cost of
repapering the Styles house, he was restless again, discontented about nothing
and everything, ashamed of his discontentment, and lonely for the fairy girl.
CHAPTER IV
IT was a morning of artistic creation. Fifteen minutes after the purple prose
of Babbitt's form-letter, Chester Kirby Laylock, the resident salesman at Glen
|