| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought,
"that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I
will not be shot; that is not fair."
He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his
wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He
gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe
the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What
splendid effort! -- what magnificent, what superhuman
strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord
fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands
dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: the grated windows of which are still shown, where, on the
charge of attempted murder preferred against him by the
surgeon Tyckelaer, Cornelius de Witt, the brother of the
Grand Pensionary of Holland was confined.
If the history of that time, and especially that of the year
in the middle of which our narrative commences, were not
indissolubly connected with the two names just mentioned,
the few explanatory pages which we are about to add might
appear quite supererogatory; but we will, from the very
first, apprise the reader -- our old friend, to whom we are
wont on the first page to promise amusement, and with whom
The Black Tulip |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: aristocracy without pluck as its backbone. Ours may show it when
the time comes, if it ever does come.
- These United States furnish the greatest market for intellectual
GREEN FRUIT of all the places in the world. I think so, at any
rate. The demand for intellectual labor is so enormous and the
market so far from nice, that young talent is apt to fare like
unripe gooseberries, - get plucked to make a fool of. Think of a
country which buys eighty thousand copies of the "Proverbial
Philosophy," while the author's admiring countrymen have been
buying twelve thousand! How can one let his fruit hang in the sun
until it gets fully ripe, while there are eighty thousand such
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
