| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: amused themselves by watching the brawny arms, the tanned faces, and
sparkling eyes of the rowers, the play of the tense muscles, the
physical and mental forces that were being exerted to bring them for a
trifling toll across the channel. So far from pitying the rowers'
distress, they pointed out the men's faces to each other, and laughed
at the grotesque expressions on the faces of the crew who were
straining every muscle; but in the fore part of the boat the soldier,
the peasant, and the old beggar woman watched the sailors with the
sympathy naturally felt by toilers who live by the sweat of their brow
and know the rough struggle, the strenuous excitement of effort. These
folk, moreover, whose lives were spent in the open air, had all seen
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: the United States has about tripled in the course of forty years.
But in the recent States adjacent to the Mississippi, the
population has increased thirty-one-fold, within the same space
of time. *n
[Footnote m: The following statements will suffice to show the
difference which exists between the commerce of the South and
that of the North: -
In 1829 the tonnage of all the merchant vessels belonging to
Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia (the four great Southern
States), amounted to only 5,243 tons. In the same year the
tonnage of the vessels of the State of Massachusetts alone
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: his head. The others followed him, and in a minute we should have
been overwhelmed. I gave the order to fire, and at the first
volley six of them went down, including the Neanderthal man.
The others hesitated a moment and then broke for the trees, some
running nimbly among the branches, while others lost themselves
to us between the boles. Both von Schoenvorts and I noticed that
at least two of the higher, manlike types took to the trees quite
as nimbly as the apes, while others that more nearly approached
man in carriage and appearance sought safety upon the ground with
the gorillas.
An examination disclosed that five of our erstwhile opponents
The Land that Time Forgot |
