| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms,
Traveler of the windy glens,
Why hast thou left my ear so soon?"
While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society,
few are attracted strongly to Nature. In their reaction to Nature
men appear to me for the most part, notwithstanding their arts,
lower than the animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as
in the case of the animals. How little appreciation of the beauty
of the land- scape there is among us! We have to be told that the
Greeks called the world Beauty, or Order, but we do not see
clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at best only a curious
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: own tribe were quite different, in which he was wofully
mistaken. It was as easy to please as it was difficult to
satisfy these savages. Young and old, men and children, never
ceased repeating the word "yammerschooner," which means
"give me." After pointing to almost every object, one after
the other, even to the buttons on our coats, and saying their
favourite word in as many intonations as possible, they would
then use it in a neuter sense, and vacantly repeat
"yammerschooner." After yammerschoonering for any article very
eagerly, they would by a simple artifice point to their young
women or little children, as much as to say, "If you will
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: Juan and M. Dimanche, for I must have a gala suit at all costs. I
have nothing, nothing but rags: start with that; it is August, the
weather is magnificent, ergo see that I receive by the end of the
week a charming morning suit, dark bronze-green jacket, and three
waistcoats, one a brimstone yellow, one a plaid, and the third
must be white; furthermore, let there be three pairs of trousers
of the most fetching kind--one pair of white English stuff, one
pair of nankeen, and a third of thin black kerseymere; lastly,
send a black dress-coat and a black satin waistcoat. If you have
picked up another Florine somewhere, I beg her good offices for
two cravats. So far this is nothing; I count upon you and your
|
