| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: He was about to close with a final grand silent demonstration,
when he suddenly recollected that Wilson had put it out of his power
to pawn or sell the Indian knife, and that he was once more in
awful peril of exposure by his creditors for that reason.
His joy collapsed utterly, and he turned away and moped toward
the door moaning and lamenting over the bitterness of his luck.
He dragged himself upstairs, and brooded in his room a long time,
disconsolate and forlorn, with Luigi's Indian knife for a text.
At last he sighed and said:
"When I supposed these stones were glass and this ivory bone,
the thing hadn't any interest for me because it hadn't any value,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: crew eyed the surf-battered shore and did nothing.
At last, after many narrow escapes from complete swamping, the
fishermen got into action. All hands tailed on to the anchor and
hove it up. For'ard, as the boat's head paid off, we set a patch
of sail about the size of a flour-sack. And we headed straight
for shore. I unlaced my shoes, unbottoned my great-coat and coat,
and was ready to make a quick partial strip a minute or so before
we struck. But we didn't strike, and, as we rushed in, I saw the
beauty of the situation. Before us opened a narrow channel,
frilled at its mouth with breaking seas. Yet, long before, when I
had scanned the shore closely, there had been no such channel. I
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: that a dispute between two persons, writing in different languages,
might be lengthened greatly by mistranslations, and thence
misconceptions of one another's meaning, much of one of the abbe's
letters being founded on an error in the translation, I concluded
to let my papers shift for themselves, believing it was better
to spend what time I could spare from public business in making
new experiments, than in disputing about those already made.
I therefore never answered M. Nollet, and the event gave me no
cause to repent my silence; for my friend M. le Roy, of the Royal
Academy of Sciences, took up my cause and refuted him; my book
was translated into the Italian, German, and Latin languages;
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
