| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Light of Western Stars by Zane Grey: man, but he's seen a lifetime fer every year. Miss Majesty, it
was Arizona thet made Nels what he is, the Arizona desert an' the
work of a cowman. He's seen ridin' at Canon Diablo an' the Verdi
an' Tonto Basin. He knows every mile of Aravaipa Valley an' the
Pinaleno country. He's ranged from Tombstone to Douglas. He hed
shot bad white men an' bad Greasers before he was twenty-one.
He's seen some life, Nels has. My sixty years ain't nothin'; my
early days in the Staked Plains an' on the border with Apaches
ain't nothin' to what Nels has seen an' lived through. He's just
come to be part of the desert; you might say he's stone an' fire
an' silence an' cactus an' force. He's a man, Miss Majesty, a
The Light of Western Stars |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: a charming declivity, at the foot of which foamed and gurgled a little
brook, which I crossed on a culvert of mossy stones, superb in color,
the prettiest of all the mosaics which time manufactures. The avenue
continues by the brookside up a gentle rise. In the distance, the
first tableau is now seen,--a mill and its dam, a causeway and trees,
linen laid out to dry, the thatched cottage of the miller, his
fishing-nets, and the tank where the fish are kept,--not to speak of
the miller's boy, who was already watching me. No matter where you are
in the country, however solitary you may think yourself, you are
certain to be the focus of the two eyes of a country bumpkin; a
laborer rests on his hoe, a vine-dresser straightens his bent back, a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: articles of faith altogether indubitable, irreversible, Divine.
Be it that these are merely questions of physical improvement. I
see no reason in that why they should be left to laymen, or urged
only on worldly grounds and self-interest. I do not find that
when urged on those grounds, the advice is listened to. I believe
that it will not be listened to until the consciences of men, as
well as their brains, are engaged in these questions; until they
are put on moral grounds, shown to have connection with moral
laws; and so made questions not merely of interest, but of duty,
honour, chivalry.
I cannot but see, moreover, how many phenomena, which are supposed
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