| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: "No," said Graham, swaying and gripping tight as
the machine lifted its nose again for an ascent.
"That's not my game. I want to do it myself. Do
it myself if I smash for it! No! I will. See. I am
going to clamber by this to come and share your
seat. Steady! I mean to fly of my own accord if
I smash at the end of it. I will have something to pay
for my sleep. Of all other things--. In my past it
was my dream to fly. Now--keep your balance."
" A dozen spies are watching me, Sire!"
Graham's temper was at end. Perhaps he chose it
When the Sleeper Wakes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: actual Concord, where her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which
the word Concord suggests ceases to be suggested. These farms
which I have myself surveyed, these bounds which I have set up,
appear dimly still as through a mist; but they have no chemistry
to fix them; they fade from the surface of the glass, and the
picture which the painter painted stands out dimly from beneath.
The world with which we are commonly acquainted leaves no trace,
and it will have no anniversary.
I took a walk on Spaulding's Farm the other afternoon. I saw the
setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood.
Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into
Walking |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: by some mechanical contrivance it had turned with the
flagstone on which it rested.
D'Artagnan, as we have said, perceived a hole in that place
and in this hole the steps of a winding staircase.
He called Porthos to look at it.
"Were our object money only," he said, "we should be rich
directly."
"How's that?"
"Don't you understand, Porthos? At the bottom of that
staircase lies, probably, the cardinal's treasury of which
folk tell such wonders, and we should only have to descend,
Twenty Years After |
