| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey: splintering of one of the six-inch oak planks. Another and another smashing
blow and the lower half of one of the planks fell inwards, leaving an aperture
large enough to admit an Indian. The men dashed forward to the assistance of
Wetzel, who stood by the hole with upraised axe. At the same moment a shot
rang out. Bennet stumbled and fell headlong. An Indian had shot through the
hole in the fence. Silas and Alfred sheered off toward the fence, out of line.
When within twenty yards of Wetzel they saw a swarthy-faced and athletic
savage squeeze through the narrow crevice. He had not straightened up before
the axe, wielded by the giant hunter, descended on his head, cracking his
skull as if it were an eggshell. The savage sank to the earth without even a
moan. Another savage naked and powerful, slipped in. He had to stoop to get
Betty Zane |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: " 'If there were no spendthrifts, what would become of you? The pair
of us are like soul and body.'
" 'Precisely so.'
" 'Come, now, give us your hand, Grandaddy Gobseck, and be magnanimous
if this is "true" and "possible" and "precisely so." '
" 'You come to me,' the usurer answered coldly, 'because Girard,
Palma, Werbrust, and Gigonnet are full up of your paper; they are
offering it at a loss of fifty per cent; and as it is likely they only
gave you half the figure on the face of the bills, they are not worth
five-and-twenty per cent of their supposed value. I am your most
obedient! Can I in common decency lend a stiver to a man who owes
Gobseck |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: appliances.
In Physics they did little. In Art nothing. In Metaphysics less than
nothing.
We will first examine, as the more pleasant spectacle of the two, that
branch of thought in which some progress was really made, and in which
the Ptolemaic schools helped forward the development of men who have
become world-famous, and will remain so, I suppose, until the end of
time.
Four names at once attract us: Euclid, Aristarchus, Eratosthenes,
Hipparchus. Archimedes, also, should be included in the list, for he
was a pupil of the Alexandrian school, having studied (if Proclus is to
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