| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: deck the evening before, flung it overboard, and watched the
glimmer of the white fish-meat turning to a silvery green as it
sank down among the kelp. Almost instantly a long moving shadow,
just darker than the blue-green mass of the water, identified
itself at a little distance.
Enormous flukes proceeded from either side, an erect dorsal fin,
like an enormous cock's crest, rose from the back, while
immediately over the head swam the two pilot-fish, following so
closely the movement of the shark as to give the impression of
actually adhering to his body. Twice and three times the great
man-eater twelve feet from snout to tail-tip, circled slowly about
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: more than we do. But, let me say again, they are likely to mind it only
in somebody they think knows the rules. With those who don't know them it
is different. I say this with all the more certainty because of a fairly
recent afternoon spent in an English garden with English friends. The
question of pronunciation came up. Now you will readily see that with
them and their compactness, their great public schools, their two great
Universities, and their great London, the one eternal focus of them all,
both the chance of diversity in social customs and the tolerance of it
must be far less than in our huge unfocused country. With us, Boston, New
York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, is each a centre. Here you
can pronounce the word calm, for example, in one way or another, and it
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: similar, although finer: a charming village of cottages facing
the Gulf near the western end. The hotel itself was a massive
two-story construction of timber, containing many apartments,
together with a large dining-room and dancing-hall. In rear of
the hotel was a bayou, where passengers landed--"Village Bayou"
it is still called by seamen;--but the deep channel which now
cuts the island in two a little eastwardly did not exist while
the village remained. The sea tore it out in one night--the same
night when trees, fields, dwellings, all vanished into the Gulf,
leaving no vestige of former human habitation except a few of
those strong brick props and foundations upon which the frame
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