| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: of cabins, and of inhabitants as passive as the cabins they dwelt
in." Without an order of council, the parish could not mend the
steeple after a storm, or repair the parsonage gable. If they
grumbled at the intendant, he threw some of the chief persons into
prison, and made the parish pay the expenses of the horse patrol,
which formed the arbitrary police of France. Everywhere was
meddling. There were reports on statistics--circumstantial,
inaccurate, and useless--as statistics are too often wont to be.
Sometimes, when the people were starving, the Government sent down
charitable donations to certain parishes, on condition that the
inhabitants should raise a sum on their part. When the sum offered
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: The greatest satisfaction he could have would be to inform us that we had
parted from the earth for ever."
"I trust from my very soul," said the count, "that his
prognostications are correct."
"The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him," replied Servadac,
"the more I become convinced that his calculations are based on a
solid foundation, and will prove correct to the minutest particular."
Ben Zoof here interrupted the conversation. "I have something
on my mind," he said.
"Something on your mind? Out with it!" said the captain.
"That telescope!" said the orderly; "it strikes me that that telescope
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: not lay so much stress on this fact, if I did not believe that
something like this is the prevailing tendency of my countrymen.
I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way
the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from
east to west. Within a few years we have witnessed the phenomenon
of a southeastward migration, in the settlement of Australia; but
this affects us as a retrograde movement, and, judging from the
moral and physical character of the first generation of
Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The
eastern Tartars think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet.
"The world ends there," say they; "beyond there is nothing but a
Walking |
