| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: like the discharge of a battery of artillery. Then he thought suddenly of
a black woman he and another man caught alone in the bush, her baby on her
back, but young and pretty. Well, they didn't shoot her!--and a black
woman wasn't white! His mother didn't understand these things; it was all
so different in England from South Africa. You couldn't be expected to do
the same sort of things here as there. He had an unpleasant feeling that
he was justifying himself to his mother, and that he didn't know how to.
He leaned further and further forward: so far at last, that the little
white lock of his hair which hung out under his cap was almost singed by
the fire. His eyes were still open, but the lids drooped over them, and
his hands hung lower and lower between his knees. There was no picture
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: hybrid-offspring should generally correspond, though due to distinct
causes; for both depend on the amount of difference of some kind between
the species which are crossed. Nor is it surprising that the facility of
effecting a first cross, the fertility of the hybrids produced, and the
capacity of being grafted together--though this latter capacity evidently
depends on widely different circumstances--should all run, to a certain
extent, parallel with the systematic affinity of the forms which are
subjected to experiment; for systematic affinity attempts to express all
kinds of resemblance between all species.
First crosses between forms known to be varieties, or sufficiently alike to
be considered as varieties, and their mongrel offspring, are very
On the Origin of Species |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: a "great blow" somewhere that day. Still the sea swelled; and a
splendid surf made the evening bath delightful. Then, just at
sundown, a beautiful cloud-bridge grew up and arched the sky with
a single span of cottony pink vapor, that changed and deepened
color with the dying of the iridescent day. And the cloud-bridge
approached, stretched, strained, and swung round at last to make
way for the coming of the gale,--even as the light bridges that
traverse the dreamy Teche swing open when luggermen sound through
their conch-shells the long, bellowing signal of approach.
Then the wind began to blow, with the passing of July. It blew
from the northeast, clear, cool. It blew in enormous sighs,
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