| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: sun, the soul of the universe, is the supreme dispenser of energy.
Instead of being served up through the intermediary of food and
passing through the ignominious circuit of gastric chemistry, could
not this solar energy penetrate the animal directly and charge it
with activity, even as the battery charges an accumulator with
power? Why not live on sun, seeing that, after all, we find naught
but sun in the fruits which we consume?
Chemical science, that bold revolutionary, promises to provide us
with synthetic food-stuffs. The laboratory and the factory will
take the place of the farm. Why should not physical science step
in as well? It would leave the preparation of plastic food to the
The Life of the Spider |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: Whatever the murderers had been looking for it was not money,
since his purse, still fairly well lined with greenbacks, was
found behind a cactus bush a few yards away.
"What in time were they after?" frowned Collins. "If it wasn't
his money--and it sure wasn't--what was it? I ce'tainly would
like to know what the Wolf wanted so blamed bad. Guess I'll not
follow Mr. Leroy just now till my leg is in better shape. Maybe I
had better investigate a little bit round town first."
The body was taken back to the Gold Nugget and placed on a table,
pending the arrival of the undertaker. It chanced that Collins,
looking absently over the crowd, glimpsed a gray felt hat that
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: you can find them in any good encyclopedia, and also in Harper's Magazine
for April, 1891, and in other places. Our fishing clashed with Canada's.
We assumed jurisdiction over the whole of the sea, which is a third as
big as the Mediterranean, on the quite fantastic ground that it was an
inland sea. Ignoring the law that nobody has jurisdiction outside the
three-mile limit from their shores, we seized Canadian vessels sixty
miles from land. In fact, we did virtually what we had gone to war with
England for doing in 1812. But England did not go to war. She asked for
arbitration. Throughout this, our tone was raw and indiscreet, while hers
was conspicuously the opposite; we had done an unwarrantable and
high-handed thing; our claim that Behring Sea was an "inclosed" sea was
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