| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: camp until we finish the job. The end of that brick pile is your
limit. You go two inches beyond that, and I'll have to shoot. Better
take it easy, now."
"It's my way of doin'," said Whistling Dick. "Easy goes. You can
depress de muzzle of dat twelve-incher, and run 'er back on de trucks.
I remains, as de newspapers says, 'in yer midst.'"
"All right," said Boston, lowering his piece, as the other returned
and took his seat again on a projecting plank in a pile of timber.
"Don't try to leave; that's all. I wouldn't miss this chance even if I
had to shoot an old acquaintance to make it go. I don't want to hurt
anybody specially, but this thousand dollars I'm going to get will fix
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: dissolution; they do not easily pass away, but are far more tenacious of
life than the tribes by whom they are spoken. 'Where two or three are
gathered together,' they survive. As in the human frame, as in the state,
there is a principle of renovation as well as of decay which is at work in
all of them. Neither do we suppose them to be invented by the wit of man.
With few exceptions, e.g. technical words or words newly imported from a
foreign language, and the like, in which art has imitated nature, 'words
are not made but grow.' Nor do we attribute to them a supernatural origin.
The law which regulates them is like the law which governs the circulation
of the blood, or the rising of the sap in trees; the action of it is
uniform, but the result, which appears in the superficial forms of men and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: He called his wife, and told her God had moved the heart of a stranger,
upon hearing their condition, to give them all that money, and a great
deal more such as that he said to her. The woman, too, made signs of the
like thankfulness, as well to Heaven as to me, and joyfully picked it up;
and I parted with no money all that year that I thought better bestowed.
I then asked the poor man if the distemper had not reached to
Greenwich. He said it had not till about a fortnight before; but that
then he feared it had, but that it was only at that end of the town
which lay south towards Deptford Bridge; that he went only to a
butcher's shop and a grocer's, where he generally bought such things
as they sent him for, but was very careful.
A Journal of the Plague Year |
