| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: would have said that the poor little creature had been visited
suddenly by some "divine afflatus"--an expression quite as
philosophical and quite as intelligible as most philosophic
formulas which I read nowadays--and had been thus raised for the
moment above his abject selfish monkey-nature, just as man
requires to be raised above his. But that theory belongs to a
philosophy which is out of date and out of fashion, and which will
have to wait a century or two before it comes into fashion again.
And now, if self-sacrifice and heroism be, as I believe,
identical, I must protest against the use of the word "sacrifice"
which is growing too common in newspaper-columns, in which we are
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: through, my friends. I can hear bells ringing in my ears! I may take
leave of you; you will bury me here!'
" 'What a fool you are!' exclaimed Colonel Hulot. 'Falcon is on the
track of the Spaniard who was listening, and he will call him to
account.'
" 'Well,' cried one and another, seeing the captain return quite out
of breath.
" 'The devil's in it,' said Falcon; 'the man went through a wall, I
believe! As I do not suppose that he is a wizard, I fancy he must
belong to the house! He knows every corner and turning, and easily
escaped.'
The Muse of the Department |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: locality and direction equal to that of a belt-line street-car horse;
and he knew he would soon be nibbling the rich mesquite grass at the
end of a forty-foot stake-rope while Ulysses rested his head in
Circe's straw-roofed hut.
More weird and lonesome than the journey of an Amazonian explorer is
the ride of one through a Texas pear flat. With dismal monotony and
startling variety the uncanny and multiform shapes of the cacti lift
their twisted trunks, and fat, bristly hands to encumber the way. The
demon plant, appearing to live without soil or rain, seems to taunt
the parched traveller with its lush grey greenness. It warps itself a
thousand times about what look to be open and inviting paths, only to
Heart of the West |
