| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: vine-covered stone. We crawled over it to get at Girty and Silvertip. There's
the little knoll; here's the very spot where I was hit by a flying tomahawk.
Yes, and there's the spring. Let me see, what did Wetzel call this spot?"
"Beautiful Spring," answered the Indian girl.
"That's it, and it's well named. What a lovely place!"
Nature had been lavish in the beautifying of this inclosed dell. It was about
fifty yards wide, and nestled among little, wooded knolls and walls of gray,
lichen-covered stone. Though the sun shone brightly into the opening, and the
rain had free access to the mossy ground, no stormy winds ever entered this
well protected glade.
Joe reveled in the beauty of the scene, even while he was too weak to stand
The Spirit of the Border |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: number I subtract thirty thousand couple, who are able to
maintain their own children, (although I apprehend there cannot
be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom) but this
being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand
breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand, for those women who
miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the
year. There only remain an hundred and twenty thousand children
of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, How
this number shall be reared, and provided for? which, as I have
already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly
impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can
A Modest Proposal |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: Part 2, he says: "If Lord Eldon could be supposed to have written
the play, I do not see how he could be chargeable with having
forgotten any of his law while writing it." Charles and Mary
Cowden Clarke speak of "the marvelous intimacy which he displays
with legal terms, his frequent adoption of them in illustration,
and his curiously technical knowledge of their form and force."
Malone, himself a lawyer, wrote: "His knowledge of legal terms
is not merely such as might be acquired by the casual observation
of even his all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of
technical skill." Another lawyer and well-known Shakespearean,
Richard Grant White, says: "No dramatist of the time, not even
What is Man? |
