| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: hand over my left shoulder, I could seize the spear or arrows;
my left hand could find my bow over my right shoulder, while a
veritable contortionist-act was necessary to place my shield in
front of me and upon my left arm. The shield, long and oval,
is utilized more as back-armor than as a defense against
frontal attack, for the close-set armlets of gold upon the left
forearm are principally depended upon to ward off knife, spear,
hatchet, or arrow from in front; but against the greater
carnivora and the attacks of several human antagonists, the
shield is utilized to its best advantage and carried by loops
upon the left arm.
The People That Time Forgot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: bestow on shadows of the same convenient tribe. Of course, it
had never been in my contemplation to invite the assistance of
any real person in the sustaining of my quasi-editorial character
and labours. It had long been my opinion, that any thing like a
literary PICNIC is likely to end in suggesting comparisons,
justly termed odious, and therefore to be avoided; and, indeed, I
had also had some occasion to know, that promises of assistance,
in efforts of that order, are apt to be more magnificent than the
subsequent performance. I therefore planned a Miscellany, to be
dependent, after the old fashion, on my own resources alone, and
although conscious enough that the moment which assigned to the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: lion-maned buffaloes of the West have fled before a solitary
horseman. Witness, too, all human beings, how when herded together
in the sheepfold of a theatre's pit, they will, at the slightest
alarm of fire, rush helter-skelter for the outlets, crowding,
trampling, jamming, and remorselessly dashing each other to death.
Best, therefore, withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied
whales before us, for there is no folly of the beasts of the earth
which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.
Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent motion,
yet it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither advanced
nor retreated, but collectively remained in one place. As is
Moby Dick |
