| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: about the height of a fair sized man; its features were similar
to those of a man; yet had it been a man?
I could not say, for it resembled an ape no more than it did
a man. Its large toes protruded laterally as do those of the
semiarboreal peoples of Borneo, the Philippines and other remote
regions where low types still persist. The countenance might
have been that of a cross between Pithecanthropus, the Java
ape-man, and a daughter of the Piltdown race of prehistoric Sussex.
A wooden cudgel lay beside the corpse.
Now this fact set me thinking. There was no wood of any
description in sight. There was nothing about the beach to
The Land that Time Forgot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: soul, too, like the bite of a scorpion. Legree gnashed on him
with his teeth, but rage kept him silent; and Tom, like a man
disenthralled, spoke, in a clear and cheerful voice,
"Mas'r Legree, as ye bought me, I'll be a true and faithful
servant to ye. I'll give ye all the work of my hands, all my time,
all my strength; but my soul I won't give up to mortal man. I will
hold on to the Lord, and put his commands before all,--die or live;
you may be sure on 't. Mas'r Legree, I ain't a grain afeard to die.
I'd as soon die as not. Ye may whip me, starve me, burn me,--it'll
only send me sooner where I want to go."
"I'll make ye give out, though, 'fore I've done!" said
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: that door, if they had dispensed with that third party, and gone
away on Monday sacredly vowed to each other in their own hearts,
you would have scarcely found their conduct moral. Consider these
things carefully,--the sign-post and the third party,--and the
difference they make. And now, for a finish, we will return to
the sign-post.
Suppose that I went over my neighbor's field on Tuesday, after
the sign-post was put up, because I saw a murder about to be
committed in the field, and therefore ran in and stopped it. Was
I doing evil that good might come? Do you not think that to stay
out and let the murder be done would have been the evil act in
The Virginian |
