| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: would make a mess of it, for there isn't anyway to shorten sail -
like reefing, you know - you have to take it ALL in - shut your
feathers down flat to your sides. That would LAND you, of course.
You could lay to, with your head to the wind - that is the best you
could do, and right hard work you'd find it, too. If you tried any
other game, you would founder, sure.
I judge it was about a couple of weeks or so after this that I
dropped old Sandy McWilliams a note one day - it was a Tuesday -
and asked him to come over and take his manna and quails with me
next day; and the first thing he did when he stepped in was to
twinkle his eye in a sly way, and say, -
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: animal and with a trampling roar ran to the far side of the corral. Several
old rams with wide curling horns faced around; and some of the ewes climbed
up on the densely packed mass. Carley rather enjoyed watching them. She
surely could not see anything amiss in this sight.
The next corral held a like number of sheep, and also several Mexicans who
were evidently driving them into a narrow lane that led farther down.
Carley saw the heads of men above other corral fences, and there was also a
thick yellowish smoke rising from somewhere.
"Carley, are you game to see the dip?" asked Flo, with good nature that yet
had a touch of taunt in it.
"That's my middle name," retorted Carley, flippantly.
The Call of the Canyon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: contemptible; they are to be despised rather than feared, and are no worse
than the rest of mankind. But a teacher or statesman may be justly
condemned, who is on a level with mankind when he ought to be above them.
There is another point of view in which this passage should also be
considered. The great enemy of Plato is the world, not exactly in the
theological sense, yet in one not wholly different--the world as the hater
of truth and lover of appearance, occupied in the pursuit of gain and
pleasure rather than of knowledge, banded together against the few good and
wise men, and devoid of true education. This creature has many heads:
rhetoricians, lawyers, statesmen, poets, sophists. But the Sophist is the
Proteus who takes the likeness of all of them; all other deceivers have a
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