| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: the highest tone, and are lacking in all polish. At home, in his
studio, he carried cleanliness and spotlessness to the last extreme,
set up two superb footmen, took fashionable pupils, dressed several
times a day, curled his hair, practised various manners of receiving
his callers, and busied himself in adorning his person in every
conceivable way, in order to produce a pleasing impression on the
ladies. In short, it would soon have been impossible for any one to
have recognised in him the modest artist who had formerly toiled
unknown in his miserable quarters in the Vasilievsky Ostroff.
He now expressed himself decidedly concerning artists and art;
declared that too much credit had been given to the old masters; that
 Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: he had taken in battle. When the expedition under Mr. Hunt
visited that part of the country, the staff still remained, with
the fragments of the banner; and the superstitious rite of
placing food from time to time on the mound, for the use of the
deceased, was still observed by the Omahas. That rite has since
fallen into disuse, for the tribe itself is almost extinct. Yet
the hill of the Blackbird continues an object of veneration to
the wandering savage, and a landmark to the voyager of the
Missouri; and as the civilized traveller comes within sight of
its spell-bound crest, the mound is pointed out to him from afar,
which still incloses the grim skeletons of the Indian warrior and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang.
Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige
und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.
401. 'Datta, dayadhvam, damyata' (Give, sympathize,
control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found
in the _Brihadaranyaka--Upanishad_, 5, 1. A translation is found
in Deussen's _Sechzig Upanishads des Veda_, p. 489.
407. Cf. Webster, _The White Devil_, v. vi:
. . . they'll remarry
Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider
Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.
 The Waste Land |