| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: thither me and Andy bent and almost broke our footsteps over the rocks
and stumps. The Inn set back from the road in a big grove of trees,
and it looked fine with its broad porches and a lot of women in white
dresses rocking in the shade. The rest of Crow Knob was a post office
and some scenery set an angle of forty-five degrees and a welkin.
"Well, sir, when we got to the gate who do you suppose comes down the
walk to greet us? Old Smoke-'em-out Smithers, who used to be the best
open air painless dentist and electric liver pad faker in the
Southwest.
"Old Smoke-'em-out is dressed clerico-rural, and has the mingled air
of a landlord and a claim jumper. Which aspect he corroborates by
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: in his country, when any young person happened to be put to
death, the executioner sold the carcass to persons of quality, as
a prime dainty; and that, in his time, the body of a plump girl
of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison the
Emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty's prime minister of
state, and other great mandarins of the court in joints from the
gibbet, at four hundred crowns. Neither indeed can I deny, that
if the same use were made of several plump young girls in this
town, who without one single groat to their fortunes, cannot stir
abroad without a chair, and appear at a play-house and assemblies
in foreign fineries which they never will pay for; the kingdom
A Modest Proposal |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: five men marched northwest from Fort Dinosaur, now waist-deep
in lush, jungle grasses starred with myriad gorgeous blooms, now
across open meadow-land and parklike expanses and again plunging
into dense forests of eucalyptus and acacia and giant arboreous
ferns with feathered fronds waving gently a hundred feet above
their heads.
About them upon the ground, among the trees and in the air over
them moved and swung and soared the countless forms of Caspak's
teeming life. Always were they menaced by some frightful thing
and seldom were their rifles cool, yet even in the brief time
they had dwelt upon Caprona they had become callous to danger,
Out of Time's Abyss |
