| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: collect. One of these egotists was addressed in the lines following,
by Agamemnon Melancthon Peters:
Dear Frank, that scrap-book where you boast
You keep a record true
Of every kind of peppered roast
That's made of you;
Wherein you paste the printed gibes
That revel round your name,
Thinking the laughter of the scribes
Attests your fame;
Where all the pictures you arrange
 The Devil's Dictionary |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: gentlefolks--etiquette dinners and all the rest of it. They give
themselves airs and expect us to be fish-out-of-water. We
aren't going to be. They think we've no Style. Well, we give
them Style for our advertisements, and we're going to give 'em
Style all through.... You needn't be born to it to dance well on
the wires of the Bond Street tradesmen. See?"
I handed him the cigar-box.
"Runcorn hadn't cigars like these," he said, truncating one
lovingly. "We beat him at cigars. We'll beat him all round."
My aunt and I regarded him, full of apprehensions.
"I got idees," he said darkly to the cigar, deepening our dread.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: Near this place they halted for the rest of the afternoon,
for the violence of the day had already utterly exhausted all
three of them. They began to suffer the beginnings of hunger;
the night was cold, and none of them dared to sleep. And in
the evening many people came hurrying along the road near-
by their stopping place, fleeing from unknown dangers before
them, and going in the direction from which my brother
had come.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE "THUNDER CHILD"
Had the Martians aimed only at destruction, they might
 War of the Worlds |