| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: will suffer disillusionment and vexation.
I have known hundreds of young radicals in my life; they have
nearly all been gallant and honest, but they have not all been
wise, and therefore not so happy as they might have been. In the
course of time I have formulated to myself the peril to which
young radicals are exposed. We see so much that is wrong in
ancient things, it gets to be a habit with us to reject them. We
have only to know that a thing is old to feel an impulse of
impatient scorn; on the other hand, we are tempted to welcome
anything which can prove itself to be unprecedented. There is a
common type of radical whose aim in life is to be several jumps
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: to the field where there was a great square patch of rough, weedy
potato-tops and tall ragweed. One corner was already dug, and I
chose a fat-looking hill where the tops were well withered. There
is all the pleasure that one can have in gold-digging in finding
one's hopes satisfied in the riches of a good hill of potatoes. I
longed to go on; but it did not seem frugal to dig any longer after
my basket was full, and at last I took my hoe by the middle and
lifted the basket to go back up the hill. I was sure that Mrs.
Blackett must be waiting impatiently to slice the potatoes into the
chowder, layer after layer, with the fish.
"You let me take holt o' that basket, ma'am," said the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: least a little with him. I am not so squeamish about pain as that.
I could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate.
But he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless! His curiosity,
his mad, aimless investigations, drove him on; and the Things were
thrown out to live a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer,
and at last to die painfully. They were wretched in themselves;
the old animal hate moved them to trouble one another; the Law held
them back from a brief hot struggle and a decisive end to their
natural animosities.
In those days my fear of the Beast People went the way of my personal
fear for Moreau. I fell indeed into a morbid state, deep and enduring,
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
