| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: him, I heard nothing more, not even the grunting of
the bears that had been behind us. All was deathly
silence--the silence of the tomb. About me lay the thick,
impenetrable fog.
I was alone. Perry was gone--gone forever, I had not
the slightest doubt.
Somewhere near by lay the mouth of a treacherous
fissure, and far down at its icy bottom lay all that was
mortal of my old friend, Abner Perry. There would his
body he preserved in its icy sepulcher for countless ages,
until on some far distant day the slow-moving river of
Pellucidar |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: without cross-fertilization, they attributed it partly to the
careful education, which followed each slight tendency to differ,
and partly to the law of mutation. This they had found in their
work with plants, and fully proven in their own case.
Physically they were more alike than we, as they lacked all
morbid or excessive types. They were tall, strong, healthy, and
beautiful as a race, but differed individually in a wide range of
feature, coloring, and expression.
"But surely the most important growth is in mind--and in the
things we make," urged Somel. "Do you find your physical variation
accompanied by a proportionate variation in ideas, feelings,
Herland |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: truths that wrought upon and moulded the lives of those who heard
him. His auditors, it may be, never suspected that Ernest, their
own neighbor and familiar friend, was more than an ordinary man;
least of all did Ernest himself suspect it; but, inevitably as
the murmur of a rivulet, came thoughts out of his mouth that no
other human lips had spoken.
When the people's minds had had a little time to cool, they were
ready enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a
similarity between General Blood-and-Thunder's truculent
physiognomy and the benign visage on the mountain-side. But now,
again, there were reports and many paragraphs in the newspapers,
The Snow Image |
