| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: consequence was that they became heated to a considerable
temperature and jammed. Even at the outset the machine ran
stiffly as well as noisily, and I, being inclined to ascribe this
stiffness to my own lassitude, merely redoubled my exertions."
"'Ot work all round," said Mr. Hoopdriver.
"You could scarcely put it more appropriately. It is my rule of
life to do whatever I find to do with all my might. I believe,
indeed, that the bearings became red hot. Finally one of the
wheels jammed together. A side wheel it was, so that its stoppage
necessitated an inversion of the entire apparatus,--an inversion
in which I participated."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: its capture. For such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing
like Samson's, his arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast
of these infinitesimal exploits, produced a feeling of
disproportion in the world, as when a steam-hammer is set to
cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, subdued person, blond and
lymphatic and sad, with something the look of a Dane: 'TRISTES
TETES DE DANOIS!' as Gaston Lafenestre used to say.
I must not let that name go by without a word for the best of all
good fellows now gone down into the dust. We shall never again see
Gaston in his forest costume - he was Gaston with all the world, in
affection, not in disrespect - nor hear him wake the echoes of
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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: the flowers of the more sterile kinds of hybrid rhododendrons, which
produce no pollen, for he will find on their stigmas plenty of pollen
brought from other flowers.
In regard to animals, much fewer experiments have been carefully tried than
with plants. If our systematic arrangements can be trusted, that is if the
genera of animals are as distinct from each other, as are the genera of
plants, then we may infer that animals more widely separated in the scale
of nature can be more easily crossed than in the case of plants; but the
hybrids themselves are, I think, more sterile. I doubt whether any case of
a perfectly fertile hybrid animal can be considered as thoroughly well
authenticated. It should, however, be borne in mind that, owing to few
On the Origin of Species |
