| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: he could have counted the grains of sand under the sea.
In the summers, while he was President, he spent the nights at a
cottage at the Soldiers' Home, a short distance north of
Washington, riding or driving out through the gathering dusk, and
returning to the White House after a frugal breakfast in the
early morning. Ten o'clock was the hour at which he was supposed
to begin receiving visitors, but it was often necessary to see
them unpleasantly early. Occasionally they forced their way to
his bedroom before he had quite finished dressing. Throngs of
people daily filled his office, the ante-rooms, and even the
corridors of the public part of the Executive Mansion. He saw
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: primitive language, it is probable that the sentence is more akin to the
original form than the word, and that the later stage of language is the
result rather of analysis than of synthesis, or possibly is a combination
of the two. Nor, again, are we sure that the original process of learning
to speak was the same in different places or among different races of men.
It may have been slower with some, quicker with others. Some tribes may
have used shorter, others longer words or cries: they may have been more
or less inclined to agglutinate or to decompose them: they may have
modified them by the use of prefixes, suffixes, infixes; by the lengthening
and strengthening of vowels or by the shortening and weakening of them, by
the condensation or rarefaction of consonants. But who gave to language
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: "I say, just take a look around before coming below. It will be
dark when we come up again."
"Certainly, sir," said Shaw, taking up a long glass and putting
it to his eyes. "Blessed thing," he went on in snatches while he
worked the tubes in and out, "I can't--never somehow--Ah! I've
got it right at last!"
He revolved slowly on his heels, keeping the end of the tube on
the sky-line. Then he shut the instrument with a click, and said
decisively:
"Nothing in sight, sir."
He followed his captain down below rubbing his hands cheerfully.
The Rescue |
