| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: make it clean, and as free from husks as you can; then put that water
from it, and put a small quantity of fresh water to it, and set it in
something that is fit for that purpose, over the fire, where it is not to
boil apace, but leisurely and very softly, until it become somewhat soft,
which you may try by feeling it betwixt your finger and thumb; and
when it is soft, then put your water from it: and then take a sharp knife,
and turning the sprout end of the corn upward with the point of your
knife, take the back part of the husk off from it, and yet leaving a kind
of inward husk on the corn, or else it is marr'd and then cut off that
sprouted end, I mean a little of it, that the white may appear; and so pull
off the husk on the cloven side, as I directed you; and then cutting off a
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: Apud Helvetios longe nobilissimus fuit et ditissimus Orgetorix. Is
M. Messala, [et P.] M. Pisone consulibus regni cupiditate inductus
coniurationem nobilitatis fecit et civitati persuasit ut de finibus suis
cum omnibus copiis exirent: perfacile esse, cum virtute omnibus
praestarent, totius Galliae imperio potiri. Id hoc facilius iis
persuasit, quod undique loci natura Helvetii continentur: una ex parte
flumine Rheno latissimo atque altissimo, qui agrum Helvetium a Germanis
dividit; altera ex parte monte Iura altissimo, qui est inter Sequanos et
Helvetios; tertia lacu Lemanno et flumine Rhodano, qui provinciam nostram
ab Helvetiis dividit. His rebus fiebat ut et minus late vagarentur et
minus facile finitimis bellum inferre possent; qua ex parte homines
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its
novelty (for other men* have thought thus,) as on account of the
pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its
general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things.
But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring
character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the
kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express the full
extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. The
belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with
the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions
of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the
The Fall of the House of Usher |
