| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: inhabitable interior! That was the question. A closer view
of the cliffs than had been afforded me from the deck of the
U-33 only confirmed my conviction that no mortal man could scale
those perpendicular heights; there was not a finger-hold, not a
toe-hold, upon them. I turned away baffled.
Nobs and I met with no sharks upon our return journey to
the submarine. My report filled everyone with theories and
speculations, and with renewed hope and determination. They all
reasoned along the same lines that I had reasoned--the
conclusions were obvious, but not the water. We were now
thirstier than ever.
The Land that Time Forgot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: invented modern naval warfare. There was that portrait of
Neil Gow, to sit for which the old fiddler walked daily
through the streets of Edinburgh arm in arm with the Duke of
Athole. There was good Harry Erskine, with his satirical nose
and upper lip, and his mouth just open for a witticism to pop
out; Hutton the geologist, in quakerish raiment, and looking
altogether trim and narrow, and as if he cared more about
fossils than young ladies; full-blown John Robieson, in
hyperbolical red dressing-gown, and, every inch of him, a fine
old man of the world; Constable the publisher, upright beside
a table, and bearing a corporation with commercial dignity;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: likewise were a shade. Without vouching for the truth of such
traditions, it is certain that Mistress Dudley sometimes
assembled a few of the stanch, though crestfallen, old Tories,
who had lingered in the rebel town during those days of wrath and
tribulation. Out of a cobwebbed bottle, containing liquor that a
royal Governor might have smacked his lips over, they quaffed
healths to the King, and babbled treason to the Republic, feeling
as if the protecting shadow of the throne were still flung around
them. But, draining the last drops of their liquor, they stole
timorously homeward, and answered not again if the rude mob
reviled them in the street.
Twice Told Tales |
