| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: try to overpower us. When we want a hero we can make one out of even
a plain grocer the third time he catches our handkerchief before it
falls to the ground."
That evening I was taken down with pernicious fever. That is a kind
of coast fever with improvements and high-geared attachments. Your
temperature goes up among the threes and fours and remains there,
laughing scornfully and feverishly at the cinchona trees and the coal-
tar derivatives. Pernicious fever is a case for a simple
mathematician instead of a doctor. It is merely this formula:
Vitality + the desire to live--the duration of the fever the result.
I took to my bed in the two-roomed thatched hut where I had been
Options |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: and hardly any memory. Hence, in their fits of fury, they remember
no claims and recognize no distinctions. I have actually known a case
where a Woman has exterminated her whole household,
and half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the fragments
swept away, has asked what has become of her husband and her children.
Obviously then a Woman is not to be irritated as long as she is in
a position where she can turn round. When you have them
in their apartments -- which are constructed with a view
to denying them that power -- you can say and do what you like;
for they are then wholly impotent for mischief, and will not remember
a few minutes hence the incident for which they may be at this moment
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: much uniformity throughout the world in the signs of negation,
and we can see how they originated. The most marked exceptions
are presented by the Arabs, Esquimaux, some Australian tribes,
and Dyaks. With the latter a frown is the sign of negation,
and with us frowning often accompanies a lateral shake of the head.
With respect to nodding in affirmation, the exceptions
are rather more numerous, namely with some of the Hindoos,
with the Turks, Abyssinians, Dyaks, Tagals, and New Zealanders.
The eyebrows are sometimes raised in affirmation, and as a person
in bending his head forwards and downwards naturally looks up to
the person whom he addresses, he will be apt to raise his eyebrows,
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
