| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: the south coast of Aros, in Sandag Bay, where so many dismal things
befell our family, as I propose to tell. The thought of all these
dangers, in the place I knew so long, makes me particularly welcome
the works now going forward to set lights upon the headlands and
buoys along the channels of our iron-bound, inhospitable islands.
The country people had many a story about Aros, as I used to hear
from my uncle's man, Rorie, an old servant of the Macleans, who had
transferred his services without afterthought on the occasion of
the marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea-
kelpie, that dwelt and did business in some fearful manner of his
own among the boiling breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: Eve put out her hand and grasped his tightly; then she carried off the
empty plate and the brown earthen soup-tureen, and brought the dish
that she had made for him. But instead of eating his dinner, Lucien
read his letter over again; and Eve, discreet maiden, did not ask
another question, respecting her brother's silence. If he wished to
tell her about it, she could wait; if he did not, how could she ask
him to tell her? She waited. Here is the letter:--
"MY FRIEND,--Why should I refuse to your brother in science the
help that I have lent you? All merits have equal rights in my
eyes; but you do not know the prejudices of those among whom I
live. We shall never make an aristocracy of ignorance understand
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: battery, the different metals of which were in contact with each
other, decide the point in question. Still, as regards the identity
of electricities from various sources, it was at that day of great
importance to determine whether or not the voltaic current could
jump, as a spark, across an interval before contact. Faraday's
friend, Mr. Gassiot, solved this problem. He erected a battery of
4000 cells, and with it urged a stream of sparks from terminal to
terminal, when separated from each other by a measurable space of air.
The memoir on the 'Electricity of the Voltaic Pile,' published in
1834, appears to have produced but little impression upon the
supporters of the contact theory. These indeed were men of too
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