| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: find the remains of many ages accumulated at certain spots,
could hardly boast of more large quadrupeds than Southern
Africa does at present. If we speculate on the condition
of the vegetation during these epochs we are at least bound
so far to consider existing analogies, as not to urge as
absolutely necessary a luxuriant vegetation, when we see
a state of things so totally different at the Cape of Good
Hope.
We know [9] that the extreme regions of North America,
many degrees beyond the limit where the ground at the depth
of a few feet remains perpetually congealed, are covered by
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: raised the monthly stipend to five hundred francs, for which, although
he did not again become an angel, he was, at least, a "friend for
life," a second father. This was his silver age.
From 1820 to 1823, Florentine had the experience of every danseuse of
nineteen to twenty years of age. Her friends were the illustrious
Mariette and Tullia, leading ladies of the Opera, Florine, and also
poor Coralie, torn too early from the arts, and love, and Camusot. As
old Cardot had by this time acquired five additional years, he had
fallen into the indulgence of a semi-paternity, which is the way with
old men towards the young talents they have trained, and which owe
their success to them. Besides, where could he have found another
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: of all the horrid dreams which had afflicted the juvenile
spirit since imagination began. "The reddleman is coming
for you!" had been the formulated threat of Wessex mothers
for many generations. He was successfully supplanted
for a while, at the beginning of the present century,
by Buonaparte; but as process of time rendered the latter
personage stale and ineffective the older phrase resumed
its early prominence. And now the reddleman has in his
turn followed Buonaparte to the land of worn-out bogeys,
and his place is filled by modern inventions.
The reddleman lived like a gipsy; but gipsies he scorned.
Return of the Native |
