| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: now was new. For this was not play; it was the real thing, and it made the
old camping seem tame. I took the saddle off Hal and tied him with my
lasso, making as long a halter as possible. Slipping the pack from the pony
was an easier task than the getting it back again was likely to prove. Next
I broke open a box of cartridges and loaded the Winchester. My revolver was
already loaded, and hung on my belt. Remembering Dick's letters about the
bears and mountain-lions in Penetier Forest, I got a good deal of comfort
out of my weapons. Then I built a fire, and while my supper was cooking I
scraped up a mass of pine-needles for a bed. Never had I sat down to a meal
with such a sense of strange enjoyment.
But when I had finished and had everything packed away and covered, my mind
The Young Forester |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: country. These people had seen me do the very
showiest bit of magic in history, and the only one
within their memory that had a positive value, and yet
here they were, ready to take up with an adventurer
who could offer no evidence of his powers but his mere
unproven word.
However, it was not good politics to let the king
come without any fuss and feathers at all, so I went
down and drummed up a procession of pilgrims and
smoked out a batch of hermits and started them out at
two o'clock to meet him. And that was the sort of
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: inheritance. History repeats itself, but the special call of an
art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly
gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.
Nothing will awaken the same response of pleasurable emotion or
conscientious endeavour. And the sailing of any vessel afloat is
an art whose fine form seems already receding from us on its way to
the overshadowed Valley of Oblivion. The taking of a modern
steamship about the world (though one would not minimize its
responsibilities) has not the same quality of intimacy with nature,
which, after all, is an indispensable condition to the building up
of an art. It is less personal and a more exact calling; less
The Mirror of the Sea |
