| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Call of the Wild by Jack London: all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his
life had he been so angry. But his strength ebbed, his eyes
glazed, and he knew nothing when the train was flagged and the two
men threw him into the baggage car.
The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting
and that he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance.
The hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him
where he was. He had travelled too often with the Judge not to
know the sensation of riding in a baggage car. He opened his
eyes, and into them came the unbridled anger of a kidnapped king.
The man sprang for his throat, but Buck was too quick for him.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: general moral attitude in procuring or undergoing the experience
brings with it a secondary satisfaction or distaste. Some men
and women, indeed, there are who can live on smiles and the word
"yes" forever. But for others (indeed for most), this is too
tepid and relaxed a moral climate. Passive happiness is slack
and insipid, and soon grows mawkish and intolerable. Some
austerity and wintry negativity, some roughness, danger,
stringency, and effort, some "no! no!" must be mixed in, to
produce the sense of an existence with character and texture and
power. The range of individual differences in this respect is
enormous; but whatever the mixture of yeses and noes may be, the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: explosives and with German submarines roaming the ocean! Oh, it was
horrible!"
"But he came back, and now all's well with you," said Carley, with a smile
of earnestness. "I'm very glad, Elsie."
"Yes--but I shudder when I think of a possible war in the future. I'm going
to raise boys, and girls, too, I hope--and the thought of war is
torturing."
Carley found her return train somewhat late, and she took advantage of the
delay to walk out to the wooded headlands above the Sound.
It was a raw March day, with a steely sun going down in a pale-gray sky.
Patches of snow lingered in sheltered brushy places. This bit of woodland
The Call of the Canyon |
