| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: least.
"Yes," he said; and did not ask what they were.
So I had to tell him. "It has made successful politcians of the
Irish. That's one. And it has given our whole race the habit of
poker."
Bang went his Winchester. The bullet struck close to my left. I
sat up angrily.
"That's the first foolish thing I ever saw you do! I said.
"Yes," he drawled slowly, "I'd ought to have done it sooner. He
was pretty near lively again." And then he picked up a
rattlesnake six feet behind me. It had been numbed by the hail,
The Virginian |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: Godwin-Austen, that the present condition of the Malay Archipelago, with
its numerous large islands separated by wide and shallow seas, probably
represents the former state of Europe, when most of our formations were
accumulating. The Malay Archipelago is one of the richest regions of the
whole world in organic beings; yet if all the species were to be collected
which have ever lived there, how imperfectly would they represent the
natural history of the world!
But we have every reason to believe that the terrestrial productions of the
archipelago would be preserved in an excessively imperfect manner in the
formations which we suppose to be there accumulating. I suspect that not
many of the strictly littoral animals, or of those which lived on naked
On the Origin of Species |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: of the rock.
"Good Heavens!" cried Ben Zoof, "that leap must have been thirty
feet at least."
"True enough," replied the captain; "I never saw such a jump."
Meantime the jackal had seated itself upon its haunches,
and was staring at the two men with an air of impudent defiance.
This was too much for Ben Zoof's forbearance, and stooping down
he caught up a huge stone, when to his surprise, he found that it was
no heavier than a piece of petrified sponge. "Confound the brute!"
he exclaimed, "I might as well throw a piece of bread at him.
What accounts for its being as light as this?"
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