| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: the door last Tuesday evening. We were together; WE WERE A
FAMILY! the dream had come true--oh, precisely true, contentedly,
true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days.
And now? Now Jean is in her grave!
In the grave--if I can believe it. God rest her sweet
spirit!
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1. Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens family
for twenty-nine years.
2. Mr. Gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis.
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What is Man? |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: fortunate for all parties, as her elbows were decidedly
akimbo at this period of her life, and it took a good many hard
knocks to teach her how to get on easily. The `haughty, uninteresting
creature' was let severely alone, but Amy's talent and taste were duly
complimented by the offer of the art table, and she exerted herself
to prepare and secure appropriate and valuable contributions to it.
Everything went on smoothly till the day before the fair
opened, then there occurred one of the little skirmishes which
it is almost impossible to avoid, when some five-and-twenty
women, old and young, with all their private piques and prejudices,
try to work together.
Little Women |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: we are. We do not know all the possible transitional gradations between
the simplest and the most perfect organs; it cannot be pretended that we
know all the varied means of Distribution during the long lapse of years,
or that we know how imperfect the Geological Record is. Grave as these
several difficulties are, in my judgment they do not overthrow the theory
of descent with modification.
Now let us turn to the other side of the argument. Under domestication we
see much variability. This seems to be mainly due to the reproductive
system being eminently susceptible to changes in the conditions of life; so
that this system, when not rendered impotent, fails to reproduce offspring
exactly like the parent-form. Variability is governed by many complex
On the Origin of Species |
