| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: perhaps, Indian meal. There was likewise a square box of
pine-wood, full of soap in bars; also, another of the same size,
in which were tallow candles, ten to the pound. A small stock of
brown sugar, some white beans and split peas, and a few other
commodities of low price, and such as are constantly in demand,
made up the bulkier portion of the merchandise. It might have
been taken for a ghostly or phantasmagoric reflection of the old
shopkeeper Pyncheon's shabbily provided shelves, save that some
of the articles were of a description and outward form which
could hardly have been known in his day. For instance, there was
a glass pickle-jar, filled with fragments of Gibraltar rock; not,
House of Seven Gables |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Two days! And the earth still raw above him.
And I was sweeping the carpet in their hall.
In number four--the room with the red wall-paper--
Some chorus girls and men were singing that song
'They'll soon be lighting candles
Round a box with silver handles'--and hearing them sing it
I started to cry. Just then he came along
And stopped on the stairs and turned and looked at me,
And took the cigar from his mouth and sort of smiled
And said, 'Say, what's the matter?' and then came down
Where I was leaning against the wall,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: further variation and improvement. Within the same large group, the later
and more highly perfected sub-groups, from branching out and seizing on
many new places in the polity of Nature, will constantly tend to supplant
and destroy the earlier and less improved sub-groups. Small and broken
groups and sub-groups will finally tend to disappear. Looking to the
future, we can predict that the groups of organic beings which are now
large and triumphant, and which are least broken up, that is, which as yet
have suffered least extinction, will for a long period continue to
increase. But which groups will ultimately prevail, no man can predict;
for we well know that many groups, formerly most extensively developed,
have now become extinct. Looking still more remotely to the future, we may
On the Origin of Species |
