| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: and he taught me how to steer the boat, and thus made the fascination
of river life more potent than ever for me.
It also gave me a chance to get acquainted with a youth who had taken
deck passage--more's the pity; for he easily borrowed six dollars of me
on a promise to return to the boat and pay it back to me the day after
we should arrive. But he probably died or forgot, for he never came.
It was doubtless the former, since he had said his parents were wealthy,
and he only traveled deck passage because it was cooler.
I soon discovered two things. One was that a vessel would not be
likely to sail for the mouth of the Amazon under ten or twelve years;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: just that same little figure I had once assisted to entertain at
Cambridge, but grey-haired now, and still it seemed with the same
knitted muffler he had discarded for a reckless half-hour while he
talked to us in Hatherleigh's rooms.
It dawned upon me that I wasn't particularly wanted in the House,
and that I should get all I needed of the opening speeches next day
from the TIMES.
I made my way out and was presently walking rather aimlessly through
the outer lobby.
I caught myself regarding the shadow that spread itself out before
me, multiplied itself in blue tints of various intensity, shuffled
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: a knife ready to strike one more fatal blow. My informer
said, when he was pursuing an Indian, the man cried out
for mercy, at the same time that he was covertly loosing the
bolas from his waist, meaning to whirl it round his head and
so strike his pursuer. "I however struck him with my sabre
to the ground, and then got off my horse, and cut his throat
with my knife." This is a dark picture; but how much more
shocking is the unquestionable fact, that all the women who
appear above twenty years old are massacred in cold blood!
When I exclaimed that this appeared rather inhuman, he
answered, "Why, what can be done? they breed so!"
The Voyage of the Beagle |
