| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: with the white rump, double black wing-bar, and barred and white-edged
tail-feathers, as any wild rock-pigeon! We can understand these facts, on
the well-known principle of reversion to ancestral characters, if all the
domestic breeds have descended from the rock-pigeon. But if we deny this,
we must make one of the two following highly improbable suppositions.
Either, firstly, that all the several imagined aboriginal stocks were
coloured and marked like the rock-pigeon, although no other existing
species is thus coloured and marked, so that in each separate breed there
might be a tendency to revert to the very same colours and markings. Or,
secondly, that each breed, even the purest, has within a dozen or, at most,
within a score of generations, been crossed by the rock-pigeon: I say
On the Origin of Species |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: mention no Mr. Bickerstaff, nor do I say, that a certain
star-gazing 'squire has been playing my executor before his time;
but I leave the world to judge, and if he puts things and things
fairly together, it won't be much wide of the mark.
Well, once more I got my doors clos'd, and prepar'd for bed, in
hopes of a little repose after so many ruffling adventures; just
as I was putting out my light in order to it, another bounces as
hard as he can knock; I open the window, and ask who's there, and
what he wants? I am Ned the sexton, replies he, and come to know
whether the Doctor left any orders for a funeral sermon, and
where he is to be laid, and whether his grave is to be plain or
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: the crimping pins of the sleeping Evelina and crept under the
bedspread at her side.
V
During the months that followed, Mr. Ramy visited the sisters
with increasing frequency. It became his habit to call on them
every Sunday evening, and occasionally during the week he would
find an excuse for dropping in unannounced as they were settling
down to their work beside the lamp. Ann Eliza noticed that Evelina
now took the precaution of putting on her crimson bow every evening
before supper, and that she had refurbished with a bit of carefully
washed lace the black silk which they still called new because it
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