| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: this respect Chinese resembles Japanese, though in very little else,
and pidgin English is nothing but the literal translation of the
Chinese idiom into Anglo-Saxon words. The necessity for such
elaborate qualification arises from the excessive simplicity of the
Japanese nouns. As we have seen, the noun is so indefinite a
generality that simply to multiply it by a number cannot possibly
produce any definite result. No exact counterpart of these nouns
exists in English, but some idea of the impossibility of the process
may be got from our word "cattle," which, prolific though it may
prove in fact, remains obstinately incapable of verbal multiplication.
All Japanese nouns being of this indefinite description, all require
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: Kitchell could keep back no longer.
"Come on!" he cried, catching up an axe; "rot the difference." All
the plundering instincts of the man were aroused and clamoring.
He had become a very wolf within scent of its prey--a veritable
hyena nuzzling about its carrion.
"Lord!" he gasped, "t' think that everything we see, everything we
find, is ours!"
Wilbur himself was not far behind him in eagerness. Somewhere
deep down in the heart of every Anglo-Saxon lies the predatory
instinct of his Viking ancestors--an instinct that a thousand
years of respectability and taxpaying have not quite succeeded in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: CHAPTER XV
CONQUEST AND PEACE
The fleet sailed directly for Hooja's island, coming to
anchor at its north-eastern extremity before the flat-
topped hill that had been Hooja's stronghold. I sent one
of the prisoners ashore to demand an immediate sur-
render; but as he told me afterward they wouldn't be-
lieve all that he told them, so they congregated on the
cliff-top and shot futile arrows at us.
In reply I had five of the feluccas cannonade them.
When they scampered away at the sound of the terrific
Pellucidar |
