| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: and threes, and left all sorts of offerings--there was enough grub for
Bingham's nine gods of war, with plenty left over for the Peace
Conference at The Hague. They brought jars of honey, and bunches of
bananas, and bottles of wine, and stacks of tortillas, and beautiful
shawls worth one hundred dollars apiece that the Indian women weave of
a kind of vegetable fibre like silk. All of 'em got down and wriggled
on the floor in front of that hard-finish god, and then sneaked off
through the woods again.
"'I wonder who gets this rake-off?' remarks High Jack.
"'Oh,' says I, 'there's priests or deputy idols or a committee of
disarrangements somewhere in the woods on the job. Wherever you find
Options |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: Continental Circuses are not, like those of this
country, under canvas, but show in wooden
buildings. At these October Fests I saw a number
of frog-swallowers, and to me they were
very repulsive indeed. In fact, Norton was
the only one I ever saw who presented his act
in a dignified manner.
Willie Hammerstein once had Norton
booked to appear at the Victoria Theater, New
York, but the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals would not allow him to
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: no reassuring limit to the eye. In the expiring, diffused twilight,
and before the clouded night dropped its mysterious veil, it was the
immensity of space made visible--almost palpable. Young Powell felt
it. He felt it in the sudden sense of his isolation; the
trustworthy, powerful ship of his first acquaintance reduced to a
speck, to something almost undistinguishable, the mere support for
the soles of his two feet before that unexpected old man becoming so
suddenly articulate in a darkening universe.
It took him a moment or so to seize the drift of the question. He
repeated slowly: 'Unusual . . . Oh, you mean for an elderly man to
be the second of a ship. I don't know. There are a good many of us
Chance |
