| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: have been tried. The inquiry after the unfortunate lady is still
continued, and shall be carried on with yet greater diligence, on
condition that you will promise to wait a year for the event,
without any unalterable resolution."
Nekayah thought this a reasonable demand, and made the promise to
her brother, who had been obliged by Imlac to require it. Imlac
had, indeed, no great hope of regaining Pekuah; but he supposed
that if he could secure the interval of a year, the Princess would
be then in no danger of a cloister.
CHAPTER XXXVI - PEKUAH IS STILL REMEMBERED. THE PROGRESS OF
SORROW.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: was the day of the silver tongue, the sweeping gesture, the decorative
apostrophe, the moving peroration.
The Senator spoke. The San Saba contingent sat, breathing hard, in the
gallery, its disordered hair hanging down to its eyes, its sixteen-
ounce hats shifted restlessly from knee to knee. Below, the
distinguished Senators either lounged at their desks with the abandon
of proven statesmanship or maintained correct attitudes indicative of
a first term.
Senator Kinney spoke for an hour. History was his theme--history
mitigated by patriotism and sentiment. He referred casually to the
picture in the outer hall--it was unnecessary, he said, to dilate upon
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: individuals, it dwells more or less clearly in the general
scientific mind. The intellectual plateau is already high, and our
discoverers are those who, like peaks above the plateau, rise a
little above the general level of thought at the time.
But many years prior even to the foregoing utterance of Faraday,
a similar argument had been employed. I quote here with equal
pleasure and admiration the following passage written by Dr. Roget
so far back as 1829. Speaking of the contact theory, he says:--
'If there could exist a power having the property ascribed to it by
the hypothesis, namely, that of giving continual impulse to a fluid
in one constant direction, without being exhausted by its own
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