| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: sand, then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark
green in the body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from a
hilltop, it is of a vivid green next the shore. Some have referred
this to the reflection of the verdure; but it is equally green there
against the railroad sandbank, and in the spring, before the leaves
are expanded, and it may be simply the result of the prevailing blue
mixed with the yellow of the sand. Such is the color of its iris.
This is that portion, also, where in the spring, the ice being
warmed by the heat of the sun reflected from the bottom, and also
transmitted through the earth, melts first and forms a narrow canal
about the still frozen middle. Like the rest of our waters, when
Walden |
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: great family meeting.
We hurried on our way, beginning to feel as if we were very
late, and it was a great satisfaction at last to turn out of the
stony highroad into a green lane shaded with old apple-trees. Mrs.
Todd encouraged the horse until he fairly pranced with gayety as we
drove round to the front of the house on the soft turf. There was
an instant cry of rejoicing, and two or three persons ran toward us
from the busy group.
"Why, dear Mis' Blackett!--here's Mis' Blackett!" I heard them
say, as if it were pleasure enough for one day to have a sight of
her. Mrs. Todd turned to me with a lovely look of triumph and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: their wild quest may be a "magnificent and unexampled discovery." I
greatly fear, however, that all he has discovered is death; for this
letter came a long while ago, and nobody has heard a single word of the
party since. They have totally vanished.
It was on the last evening of my stay at his house that he told the
ensuing story to me and Captain Good, who was dining with him. He had
eaten his dinner and drunk two or three glasses of old port, just to
help Good and myself to the end of the second bottle. It was an unusual
thing for him to do, for he was a most abstemious man, having conceived,
as he used to say, a great horror of drink from observing its effects
upon the class of colonists--hunters, transport riders and
Long Odds |
