| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: daring and ambitious. One day she climbed the Long's Peak
trail to timberline, and had tea at Timberline Cabin with
Albert Edward Cobbins. Albert Edward Cobbins, Englishman,
erstwhile sailor, adventurer and gentleman, was the keeper
of Timberline Cabin, and the loneliest man in the Rockies.
It was his duty to house overnight climbers bound for the
Peak, sunrise parties and sunset parties, all too few now in
the chill October season-end. Fanny was his first visitor
in three days. He was pathetically glad to see her.
"I'll have tea for you," he said, "in a jiffy. And I baked
a pan of French rolls ten minutes ago. I had a feeling."
Fanny Herself |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: lamenting, "Why the devil can't some people never get to bed at a reasonable
hour?" So familiar was he with the process of putting up his own car that he
awaited each step like an able executioner condemned to his own rack.
The car insultingly cheerful on the driveway. The car door opened and banged
shut, then the garage door slid open, grating on the sill, and the car door
again. The motor raced for the climb up into the garage and raced once more,
explosively, before it was shut off. A final opening and slamming of the car
door. Silence then, a horrible silence filled with waiting, till the
leisurely Mr. Doppelbrau had examined the state of his tires and had at last
shut the garage door. Instantly, for Babbitt, a blessed state of oblivion.
IV
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: have been different. Not all the English yet, but many more than there
were fifty or even twenty years ago, have ceased to apply their rules to
us.
About 1874 a friend of mine from New York was taken to a London Club.
Into the room where he was came the Prince of Wales, who took out a
cigar, felt for and found no matches, looked about, and there was a
silence. My friend thereupon produced matches, struck one, and offered it
to the Prince, who bowed, thanked him, lighted his cigar, and presently
went away.
Then an Englishman observed to my friend: "It's not the thing for a
commoner to offer a light to the Prince."
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