| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: right: but what is there in such a conception contrary to any
doctrine - at least of the Church of England? To say that this
cannot be true; that species cannot vary, because God, at the
beginning, created each thing "according to its kind," is really to
beg the question; which is - Does the idea of "kind" include
variability or not? and if so, how much variability? Now, "kind,"
or "species," as we call it, is defined nowhere in the Bible. What
right have we to read our own definition into the word? - and that
against the certain fact, that some "kinds" do vary, and that
widely, - mankind, for instance, and the animals and plants which
he domesticates. Surely that latter fact should be significant, to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: repentance, the whole story of a woman's life in that sublime face--
the careless childhood, the loveless marriage, a terrible passion,
flowers springing up in storm and struck down by the thunderbolt into
an abyss from which there is no return.
"Darling mother," Louis said at last, "why do you hide your pain from
me?"
"My boy, we ought to hide our troubles from strangers," she said; "we
should show them a smiling face, never speak of ourselves to them, nor
think about ourselves; and these rules, put in practice in family
life, conduce to its happiness. You will have much to bear one day! Ah
me! then think of your poor mother who died smiling before your eyes,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military, post of
Uncle Sam's government is here established. Its front is
ornamented with a portico of half-a-dozen wooden pillars,
supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite
steps descends towards the street Over the entrance hovers an
enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a
shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of
intermingled thunder- bolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With
the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy
fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the
general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the
The Scarlet Letter |
