| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: minutes, (if you do, for we are old boys, and not champion
scullers, you remember,) then say if you begin to feel a little
warmed up or not! You can row easily and gently all day, and you
can row yourself blind and black in the face in ten minutes, just
as you like. It has been long agreed that there is no way in which
a man can accomplish so much labor with his muscles as in rowing.
It is in the boat, then, that man finds the largest extension of
his volitional and muscular existence; and yet he may tax both of
them so slightly, in that most delicious of exercises, that he
shall mentally write his sermon, or his poem, or recall the remarks
he has made in company and put them in form for the public, as well
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: international congress, always sitting, where public wrongs are
first declared, public errors first corrected, and the course of
public opinion shaped, day by day, a little nearer to the right.
No measure comes before Parliament but it has been long ago
prepared by the grand jury of the talkers; no book is written that
has not been largely composed by their assistance. Literature in
many of its branches is no other than the shadow of good talk; but
the imitation falls far short of the original in life, freedom and
effect. There are always two to a talk, giving and taking,
comparing experience and according conclusions. Talk is fluid,
tentative, continually "in further search and progress"; while
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: one could describe the form, or the nature, or even the size, so
rapidly did it rush past. It was an automobile; all were agreed on
that. But as to what motor drove it, only imagination could say; and
when the popular imagination is aroused, what limit is there to its
hypotheses?
At that period the most improved automobiles, whether driven by
steam, gasoline, or electricity, could not accomplish much more than
sixty miles an hour, a speed that the railroads, with their most
rapid expresses, scarce exceed on the best lines of America and
Europe. Now, this new automobile which was astonishing the world,
traveled at more than double this speed.
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