| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: case of the Indian is enough in the way of an instance. Our own hands are
by no means clean. It is not for us to denounce England as a land-
grabber.
You cannot hate statistics more than I do. But at times there is no
dodging them, and this is one of the times. In 1803 we paid Napoleon
Bonaparte fifteen millions for what was then called Louisiana. Napoleon
had his title to this land from Spain. Spain had it from France. France
had it--how? She had it because La Salle, a Frenchman, sailed down the
Mississippi River. This gave him title to the land. There were people on
the bank already, long before La Salle came by.
It would have surprised them to be told that the land was no longer
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: of the purpose of the strange little implement which I was poking
toward him. With a sound that was half human and half the growl
of a wild beast, he sprang toward me. I aimed at his heart and
fired, and as he sprawled headlong to the ground, the others of
his tribe, overcome by fright at the report of the pistol,
scattered toward the cliffs--while Lys, with outstretched arms,
ran toward me.
As I crushed her to me, there rose from the black night behind us
and then to our right and to our left a series of frightful
screams and shrieks, bellowings, roars and growls. It was the
night-life of this jungle world coming into its own--the huge,
The Land that Time Forgot |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: as she began preparations for the evening service.
These consisted in combing stiffly back the strands of
light-brown hair which, during the day, had exuberantly
loosened themselves over her temples into something
almost like curls; in fastening down upon this rebellious
hair a plain brown-straw bonnet, guiltless of all
ornament save a binding ribbon of dull umber hue;
and in putting on a thin dark-gray shawl and a pair
of equally subdued lisle-thread gloves. Thus attired,
she made a mischievous little grimace of dislike at her
puritanical image in the looking-glass over the mantel,
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
