| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: You, my reader, may have heard (or perhaps even held) foolish
conversations like that; and you will readily perceive that if we didn't
say "car" when we spoke of the vehicle you get into when you board a
train, but called it a voiture, or something else quite "foreign," the
Englishman would not feel that we had taken a sort of liberty with his
mother-tongue. A deep point lies here: for most English the world is
divided into three peoples, English, foreigners, and Americans; and for
most of us likewise it is divided into Americans, foreigners, and Eng-
lish. Now a "foreigner" can call molasses whatever he pleases; we do not
feel that he has taken any liberty with our mother-tongue; his tongue has
a different mother; he can't help that; he's not to be criticized for
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare: This but begins, the wo others must end.
Enter Tybalt.
Ben. Here comes the Furious Tybalt backe againe
Rom. He gon in triumph, and Mercutio slaine?
Away to heauen respectiue Lenitie,
And fire and Fury, be my conduct now.
Now Tybalt take the Villaine backe againe
That late thou gau'st me, for Mercutios soule
Is but a little way aboue our heads,
Staying for thine to keepe him companie:
Either thou or I, or both, must goe with him
Romeo and Juliet |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: door. When he was ready we slipped in and took our seats, Tommy
jumping in after us, and pushed the canoe, now very heavily
laden, out into the lake.
Here, at a distance of about forty paces, which we judged to be
beyond wooden spear-throw, we rested upon our paddles to see what
would happen. All the crowd of islanders had rushed to the lake
edge where they stood staring at us stupidly. Bastin, thinking
the occasion opportune, lifted the hideous head of the idol which
he had carefully washed, and began to preach on the downfall of
"the god of the Grove."
This action of his appeared to awake memories or forebodings in
When the World Shook |
