| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: see vertiginous, the rocks, the mountains, the cataracts, and all the hurry
which Nature is in with all her great works about her.
As I went on thus, methought my chaise, the wreck of which look'd stately
enough at the first, insensibly grew less and less in its size; the
freshness of the painting was no more--the gilding lost its lustre--and the
whole affair appeared so poor in my eyes--so sorry!--so contemptible! and,
in a word, so much worse than the abbess of Andouillets' itself--that I was
just opening my mouth to give it to the devil--when a pert vamping chaise-
undertaker, stepping nimbly across the street, demanded if Monsieur would
have his chaise refitted--No, no, said I, shaking my head sideways--Would
Monsieur choose to sell it? rejoined the undertaker--With all my soul, said
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: horrified driver beholds his leaders prancing gaily up the road
and his wheelers jogging steadily down the road, all at the same
time and all harnessed together and to the same rig.
I no longer jack-pole, and I don't mind admitting how I got out of
the habit. It was my eyes that enslaved my fingers into ill
practices. So I shut my eyes and let the fingers go it alone.
To-day my fingers are independent of my eyes and work
automatically. I do not see what my fingers do. They just do it.
All I see is the satisfactory result.
Still we managed to get over the ground that first day--down sunny
Sonoma Valley to the old town of Sonoma, founded by General
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: fish, though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim
or not. It merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its
feet up. I have not seen any other animal do that before. I said
I believed it was an enigma, but she only admired the word without
understanding it. In my judgment it is either an enigma or some
kind of a bug. If it dies, I will take it apart and see what its
arrangements are. I never had a thing perplex me so.
Three Months Later
The perplexity augments instead of diminishing. I sleep but little.
It has ceased from lying around, and goes about on its four legs
now. Yet it differs from the other four-legged animals in that
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