| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and
men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the
revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole
universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the
virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To
produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and
enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be
who have tried it.
Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my
credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time
I have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches,
Moby Dick |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: his eyes quite steady and level, meeting the gaze of another
unwaveringly--and in that moment something happened to
Billy Byrne's perceptive faculties. It was as though scales
which had dimmed his mental vision had partially dropped
away, for suddenly he saw what he had not before seen--a
very beautiful girl, brave and unflinching before the brutal
menace of his attitude, and though the mucker thought that
he still hated her, the realization came to him that be must not
raise a hand against her--that for the life of him he could
not, nor ever again against any other woman. Why this
change, Billy did not know, he simply knew that it was so,
The Mucker |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: as he explains it with admirable sense, "In fact, I quietly
declare war with the State after my fashion, though I will
still make what use and get what advantage of her I can, as
is usual in such cases." He was put in prison; but that was
a part of his design. "Under a government which imprisons
any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if
ten men whom I could name - ay, if ONE HONEST man, in this
State of Massachusetts, CEASING TO HOLD SLAVES, were actually
to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the
county gaol therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in
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