| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: IN seven mouths one of the messengers who had been sent away upon
the day when the promise was drawn from the Princess, returned,
after many unsuccessful rambles, from the borders of Nubia, with an
account that Pekuah was in the hands of an Arab chief, who
possessed a castle or fortress on the extremity of Egypt. The
Arab, whose revenue was plunder, was willing to restore her, with
her two attendants, for two hundred ounces of gold.
The price was no subject of debate. The Princess was in ecstasies
when she heard that her favourite was alive, and might so cheaply
be ransomed. She could not think of delaying for a moment Pekuah's
happiness or her own, but entreated her brother to send back the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: consisted in always cultivating the best known variety, sowing its seeds,
and, when a slightly better variety has chanced to appear, selecting it,
and so onwards. But the gardeners of the classical period, who cultivated
the best pear they could procure, never thought what splendid fruit we
should eat; though we owe our excellent fruit, in some small degree, to
their having naturally chosen and preserved the best varieties they could
anywhere find.
A large amount of change in our cultivated plants, thus slowly and
unconsciously accumulated, explains, as I believe, the well-known fact,
that in a vast number of cases we cannot recognise, and therefore do not
know, the wild parent-stocks of the plants which have been longest
On the Origin of Species |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Love and Friendship by Jane Austen: encourage you in it, by my own letters; on the contrary I intend
to fill them with such lively Wit and enlivening Humour as shall
even provoke a smile in the sweet but sorrowfull countenance of
my Eloisa.
In the first place you are to learn that I have met your sisters
three freinds Lady Lesley and her Daughters, twice in Public
since I have been here. I know you will be impatient to hear my
opinion of the Beauty of three Ladies of whom you have heard so
much. Now, as you are too ill and too unhappy to be vain, I
think I may venture to inform you that I like none of their faces
so well as I do your own. Yet they are all handsome--Lady Lesley
Love and Friendship |
