| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: The old man, though his fanaticism had generally all the calmness
of reason, was deeply moved while reciting this tale; and his
unwonted emotion seemed to rebuke and keep down that of his
companion. They sat in silence, with their faces to the fire,
imagining, perhaps, in its red embers new scenes of persecution
yet to be encountered. The snow still drifted hard against the
windows, and sometimes, as the blaze of the logs had gradually
sunk, came down the spacious chimney and hissed upon the hearth.
A cautious footstep might now and then be heard in a neighboring
apartment, and the sound invariably drew the eyes of both Quakers
to the door which led thither. When a fierce and riotous gust of
Twice Told Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: earth.
So through my eyes half closed I watched the sale of these tins,
and grew familiar with the ham's inevitable trade-mark--that
label with the devil and his horns and hoofs and tail very
pronounced, all colored a sultry prodigious scarlet. And when
each horseman had made his purchase, he would trail his spurs
over the floor, and presently the sound of his horse's hoofs
would be the last of him. Through my dozing attention came
various fragments of talk, and sometimes useful bits of
knowledge. For instance, I learned the true value of tomatoes in
this country. One fellow was buying two cans of them.
The Virginian |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: multiplied.
[15] The opinion of the crowd was formed in this case by those
rough-and-ready associations of dissimilar things, the mechanism
of which I have previously explained. The French national guard
of that period, being composed of peaceable shopkeepers, utterly
lacking in discipline and quite incapable of being taken
seriously, whatever bore a similar name, evoked the same
conception and was considered in consequence as harmless. The
error of the crowd was shared at the time by its leaders, as
happens so often in connection with opinions dealing with
generalisations. In a speech made in the Chamber on the 31st of
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