| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: weeks at some watering-place along the coast, and as you roll along
think more than once, and that not over-cheerfully, of what you
shall do when you get there. You are half-tired, half-ashamed, of
making one more in the ignoble army of idlers, who saunter about
the cliffs, and sands, and quays; to whom every wharf is but a
"wharf of Lethe," by which they rot "dull as the oozy weed." You
foreknow your doom by sad experience. A great deal of dressing, a
lounge in the club-room, a stare out of the window with the
telescope, an attempt to take a bad sketch, a walk up one parade
and down another, interminable reading of the silliest of novels,
over which you fall asleep on a bench in the sun, and probably have
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: depended my knife; at my right hip was my stone hatchet; and at
my left hung the coils of my long rope. By reaching my right
hand over my left shoulder, I could seize the spear or arrows;
my left hand could find my bow over my right shoulder, while a
veritable contortionist-act was necessary to place my shield in
front of me and upon my left arm. The shield, long and oval,
is utilized more as back-armor than as a defense against
frontal attack, for the close-set armlets of gold upon the left
forearm are principally depended upon to ward off knife, spear,
hatchet, or arrow from in front; but against the greater
carnivora and the attacks of several human antagonists, the
The People That Time Forgot |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Sportsman by Xenophon: mass of pleasures are but evil,[16] to which men succumb, and thereby
are incited to adopt the worse cause in speech and course in
action.[17] And with what result?--from vain and empty arguments they
contract emnities, and reap the fruit of evil deeds, diseases, losses,
death--to the undoing of themselves, their children, and their
friends.[18] Having their senses dulled to things evil, while more
than commonly alive to pleasures, how shall these be turned to good
account for the salvation of the state? Yet from these evils every one
will easily hold aloof, if once enamoured of those joys whose brief I
hold, since a chivalrous education teaches obedience to laws, and
renders justice familiar to tongue and ear.[19]
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