The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: it would resemble 'a fine metallic web,' penetrating the lac in
every direction. But the fact is that it resembles the wax of black
sealing-wax, which surrounds and insulates the particles of
conducting carbon, interspersed throughout its mass. In the case of
shell-lac, therefore, space is an insulator.
But now, take the case of a conducting metal. Here we have, as
before, the swathing of space round every atom. If space be an
insulator there can be no transmission of electricity from atom to
atom. But there is transmission; hence space is a conductor. Thus
he endeavours to hamper the atomic theory. 'The reasoning,' he says,
'ends in a subversion of that theory altogether; for if space be an
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: nearly every day."
"I wonder what he is thinking about now," said Clementine.
"He is thinking that this winter has cost a good deal, and that it is
time we went to economize with your old uncle Ronquerolles," replied
Adam.
The countess stopped the carriage near Paz, and bade him take the seat
beside her. Thaddeus grew as red as a cherry.
"I shall poison you," he said; "I have been smoking."
"Doesn't Adam poison me?" she said.
"Yes, but he is Adam," returned the captain.
"And why can't Thaddeus have the same privileges?" asked the countess,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: Mr. M'Kenzie now detached a small band, under the conduct of Mr.
John Reed, to visit the caches made by Mr. Hunt at the Caldron
Linn, and to bring the contents to his post; as he depended, in
some measure, on them for his supplies of goods and ammunition.
They had not been gone a week, when two Indians arrived of the
Pallatapalla tribe, who live upon a river of the same name. These
communicated the unwelcome intelligence that the caches had been
robbed. They said that some of their tribe had, in the course of
the preceding spring, been across the mountains, which separated
them from Snake River, and had traded horses with the Snakes in
exchange for blankets, robes and goods of various descriptions.
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