| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: and disappears. An easy way of travelling, if the conveyance
possessed a rudder that allowed the passenger to land where he
pleases! But the little things are at the mercy of the winds:
where will they alight? Hundreds, thousands of yards away,
perhaps. Let us wish them a prosperous journey.
The problem of dissemination is now solved. What would happen if
matters, instead of being brought about by my wiles, took place in
the open fields? The answer is obvious. The young Spiders, born
acrobats and rope-walkers, climb to the top of a branch so as to
find sufficient space below them to unfurl their apparatus. Here,
each draws from her rope-factory a thread which she abandons to the
The Life of the Spider |
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: could be given. The explanation, I think, is simple: from long-continued
study they are strongly impressed with the differences between the several
races; and though they well know that each race varies slightly, for they
win their prizes by selecting such slight differences, yet they ignore all
general arguments, and refuse to sum up in their minds slight differences
accumulated during many successive generations. May not those naturalists
who, knowing far less of the laws of inheritance than does the breeder, and
knowing no more than he does of the intermediate links in the long lines of
descent, yet admit that many of our domestic races have descended from the
same parents--may they not learn a lesson of caution, when they deride the
idea of species in a state of nature being lineal descendants of other
On the Origin of Species |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: "Don't you see that he came here to save me?" she cried, when
they were alone. "Don't you see it was for me? He didn't come to
spy out your place of hiding."
"I see that he has found it. If I let him go, he will bring back
a posse to take us."
"You could ride across the line into Mexico."
"I could, but I won't."
"But why?"
"Because, Miss Mackenzie, the money we took from the express car
of the Limited is hidden here, and I don't know where it is;
because the sun won't ever rise on a day when Val Collins will
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