| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: years of his life. I dare not say that he has been always
successful in the treatment of these theoretic notions. In his
speculations he mixes together light and darkness in varying
proportions, and carries us along with him through strong
alternations of both. It is impossible to say how a certain amount
of mathematical training would have affected his work. We cannot
say what its influence would have been upon that force of
inspiration that urged him on; whether it would have daunted him,
and prevented him from driving his adits into places where no theory
pointed to a lode. If so, then we may rejoice that this strong
delver at the mine of natural knowledge was left free to wield his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: had made part of his memorable debt, having lost money in betting,
and been obliged to borrow of that gay companion. It was generally known
in Middlemarch that a good deal of money was lost and won in this way;
and the consequent repute of the Green Dragon as a place of dissipation
naturally heightened in some quarters the temptation to go there.
Probably its regular visitants, like the initiates of freemasonry,
wished that there were something a little more tremendous to keep
to themselves concerning it; but they were not a closed community,
and many decent seniors as well as juniors occasionally turned into
the billiard-room to see what was going on. Lydgate, who had the
muscular aptitude for billiards, and was fond of the game, had once
Middlemarch |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and
knotted with burs; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring
and spectral, but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in
it. Still he must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may
judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a
favorite steed of his master's, the choleric Van Ripper, who was
a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own
spirit into the animal; for, old and broken-down as he looked,
there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young
filly in the country.
Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed . He rode
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
