| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: of Serpent worship, of Sun worship, and other archaic forms
of religion; of early astrological and chemical lore,
derived from the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks;
what abundance of superstitious observances and what is now termed
"Folklore"; what riches, too, for the philological student,
did those many books contain, and how famous would the library
now be that could boast of possessing but a few of them.
[1] The received opinion is that the "pieces of silver" here mentioned
were Roman denarii, which were the silver pieces then commonly used
in Ephesus. If now we weigh a denarius against modern silver,
it is exactly equal to ninepence, and fifty thousand times ninepence
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: land to their children, what difference will that
make? The land belongs to the future, Carl;
that's the way it seems to me. How many of the
names on the county clerk's plat will be there
in fifty years? I might as well try to will the
sunset over there to my brother's children. We
come and go, but the land is always here. And
the people who love it and understand it are
the people who own it--for a little while."
Carl looked at her wonderingly. She was
O Pioneers! |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: at the lake and the opposite mountains. He wondered whether he had gone
too far, but he decided that he must advance farther, rather than retreat.
While he was thinking of something else to say, the young lady turned
to the little boy again.
"I should like to know where you got that pole," she said.
"I bought it," responded Randolph.
"You don't mean to say you're going to take it to Italy?"
"Yes, I am going to take it to Italy," the child declared.
The young girl glanced over the front of her dress and smoothed out a knot
or two of ribbon. Then she rested her eyes upon the prospect again.
"Well, I guess you had better leave it somewhere," she said after a moment.
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