| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: humble capacity to believe that you, after having offered to send
me money in an envelope, should fail to do so.
"Send me, I pray of you, the money to remunerate the small boy for
his repeated visits to you. Please be discreet and send it in an
envelope by the bearer.
"Last night I came to the hotel with the boy. You were dining. I
waited more than an hour for you and then went to the theatre.
Give the boy some small amount, and send me a like offering of
larger proportions.
"Awaiting incessantly a slight attention on your part,
"CAPTAIN ERNESTO BECUCCI."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: lapping the decaying piles and surging far beneath the
dock to the remote fastnesses inhabited by the great
fierce dock rats and their fiercer human antitypes.
Several times De Vac paced the length of this black
alley in search of the little doorway of the building he
sought. At length he came upon it, and, after repeated
pounding with the pommel of his sword, it was opened
by a slatternly old hag.
"What would ye of a decent woman at such an un-
godly hour?" she grumbled. "Ah, 'tis ye, my lord?" she
added, hastily, as the flickering rays of the candle she
The Outlaw of Torn |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: ribbon. These were evidently house-servants,--slaves. But from
whence? Nothing could be learned until the luggers should
return; and none of them was yet in sight. Still Feliu was not
anxious as to the fate of his boats, manned by the best sailors
of the coast. Rarely are these Louisiana fishermen lost in
sudden storms; even when to other eyes the appearances are most
pacific and the skies most splendidly blue, they divine some
far-off danger, like the gulls; and like the gulls also, you see
their light vessels fleeing landward. These men seem living
barometers, exquisitely sensitive to all the invisible changes of
atmospheric expansion and compression; they are not easily caught
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