| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: those footprints were being made immediately in front of us all
the while, and that they were the only sign of any presence which
our eyes could see. But my fancy overcame my thoughts. It was
shame only which held me from asking this question of the
Virginian: Had one horse served in both cases of Justice down at
the cottonwoods? I wondered about this. One horse--or had the
strangling nooses dragged two saddles empty at the same signal?
Most likely; and therefore these people up here--Was I going back
to the nursery? I brought myself up short. And I told myself to
be steady; there lurked in this brain-process which was going on
beneath my reason a threat worse than the childish apprehensions
The Virginian |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: was said, tethered his horse nightly among the graves in the
churchyard.
The sequestered situation of this church seems always to
have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a
knoll, surrounded by locust, trees and lofty elms, from among
which its decent, whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like
Christian purity beaming through the shades of retirement. A
gentle slope descends from it to a silver sheet of water,
bordered by high trees, between which, peeps may be caught at the
blue hills of the Hudson. To look upon its grass-grown yard,
where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: the very sap of his intellect--the source from which all his
strength as an experimenter was derived. While once sauntering with
him through the Crystal Palace, at Sydenham, I asked him what
directed his attention to the magnetization of light. It was his
theoretic notions. He had certain views regarding the unity and
convertibility of natural forces; certain ideas regarding the
vibrations of light and their relations to the lines of magnetic
force; these views and ideas drove him to investigation. And so it
must always be: the great experimentalist must ever be the habitual
theorist, whether or not he gives to his theories formal
enunciation.
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