| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: climate has not changed since the period when those animals
lived, which now lie buried in the ice. At present I
only wish to show, that as far as _quantity_ of food _alone_ is
concerned, the ancient rhinoceroses might have roamed over
the _steppes_ of central Siberia (the northern parts probably
being under water) even in their present condition, as well
as the living rhinoceroses and elephants over the _Karros_
of Southern Africa.
I will now give an account of the habits of some of the
more interesting birds which are common on the wild plains
of Northern Patagonia: and first for the largest, or South
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: a slight pressure of the arm I held and drew toward my heart. It was
one of those nothings of which memory makes poems when we sit by the
fire and recall the hour when that nothing moved us, and the place
where it did so,--a mirage the effects of which have never been noted
down, though it appears on the objects that surround us in moments
when life sits lightly and our hearts are full. The loveliest scenery
is that we make ourselves. What man with any poesy in him does not
remember some mere mass of rock, which holds, it may be, a greater
place in his memory than the celebrated landscapes of other lands,
sought at great cost. Beside that rock, tumultuous thoughts! There a
whole life evolved; there all fears dispersed; there the rays of hope
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: dwelling with a sturdy round tower at one end, crowned with a big
eight-sided lantern--a solitary lighthouse.
That is the Isle of the Wise Virgin. Behind it the long blue
Laurentian Mountains, clothed with unbroken forest, rise in sombre
ranges toward the Height of Land. In front of it the waters of the
gulf heave and sparkle far away to where the dim peaks of St. Anne
des Monts are traced along the southern horizon. Sheltered a
little, but not completely, by the island breakwater of granite,
lies the rocky beach of Dead Men's Point, where an English navy was
wrecked in a night of storm a hundred years ago.
There are a score of wooden houses, a tiny, weather-beaten chapel, a
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