| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs: All must come with me--those who refuse shall feel the whip."
Number Twelve did as he was bid. The creatures mumbled
among themselves for a few minutes. Finally Number
Thirteen cracked his long whip to attract their attention.
"Come!" he said.
Nine of them shuffled after him as he turned toward the
outer gate--only Number Ten and Number Three held back.
The young man walked quickly to where they stood eyeing
him sullenly. The others halted to watch--ready to
spring upon their new master should the tide of the
impending battle turn against him. The two mutineers backed
The Monster Men |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: Marseilles, raising hands in obsecration, attesting god
Lyoeus, and the vats staved in, and the dishonest wines
poured forth among the sea. It is not Pan only; Bacchus,
too, is dead.
If wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance, the sun
of the white dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two or
three, all fervent, hushing their talk, degusting tenderly,
and storing reminiscences - for a bottle of good wine, like a
good act, shines ever in the retrospect - if wine is to
desert us, go thy ways, old Jack! Now we begin to have
compunctions, and look back at the brave bottles squandered
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: but, in their case, too, "historical continuity" was lacking, and that
is a kind of renown which tells quite as much at Court as on the
battlefield, in diplomatic circles as in Parliament, with a book, or
in connection with an adventure; it is, as it were, a sacred ampulla
poured upon the heads of each successive generation. Whereas a noble
family, inactive and forgotten, is very much in the position of a
hard-featured, poverty-stricken, simple-minded, and virtuous maid,
these qualifications being the four cardinal points of misfortune. The
marriage of a daughter of the Troisvilles with General Montcornet, so
far from opening the eyes of the Antiquities, very nearly brought
about a rupture between the Troisvilles and the salon d'Esgrignon, the
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