| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: from the Frogs (I had quite learned to understand their croaking by
this time).
"It's a dagger!" Sylvie proclaimed in a peremptory tone.
"Hold your tongues!" And the croaking ceased at once.
Shakespeare has not told us, so far as I know, that Macbeth had any
such eccentric habit as turning head-over-heels in private life: but
Bruno evidently considered it quite an essential part of the character,
and left the stage in a series of somersaults. However, he was back
again in a few moments, having tucked under his chin the end of a tuft
of wool (probably left on the thorn by a wandering sheep), which made a
magnificent beard, that reached nearly down to his feet.
Sylvie and Bruno |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: haircut.
"You'll have to let it grow, Ted. I don't mean that I want
you to have a mane, like Ysaye. But I do think you ought to
discard that convict cut. Besides, it isn't becoming. And
if you're going to be an American violinist you'll have to
look it--with a foreign finish."
He let his hair grow. Fanny watched with interest for the
appearance of the unruly lock which had been wont to
straggle over his white forehead in his schoolboy days. The
new and well-cut American clothes effected surprisingly
little change. Fanny, surveying him, shook her head.
Fanny Herself |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: he'd get rid of his excitement by shooting off a gun, provided he
pointed it away from the house, than to sit around and let his
mind explode and kill all our prospects. I told him, too, to
remember that he wasn't responsible for the morals or actions of
his guests, only for their health.
"Health!" he echoed, and kicked a chair. "Health! Why, if I
wanted to keep a good dog in condition, Minnie, I wouldn't bring
him here."
"No," I retorted, "you'd shut him in an old out oven, and give
him a shoe to chew, and he'd come out in three days frisking and
happy. But you can't do that with people."
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