| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: in such a narrow street, running down its middle, instead of two,
one on each side, near the footway; for where all the rain that
falls on a street runs from the sides and meets in the middle,
it forms there a current strong enough to wash away all the mud it
meets with; but when divided into two channels, it is often too weak
to cleanse either, and only makes the mud it finds more fluid,
so that the wheels of carriages and feet of horses throw and dash it
upon the foot-pavement, which is thereby rendered foul and slippery,
and sometimes splash it upon those who are walking. My proposal,
communicated to the good doctor, was as follows:
"For the more effectual cleaning and keeping clean the streets of
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: relates his journeys through the Astral Regions; his descriptions
cannot fail to astonish the reader, partly through the crudity of
their details. A man whose scientific eminence is incontestable, and
who united in his own person powers of conception, will, and
imagination, would surely have invented better if he had invented at
all. The fantastic literature of the East offers nothing that can give
an idea of this astounding work, full of the essence of poetry, if it
is permissible to compare a work of faith with one of oriental fancy.
The transportation of Swedenborg by the Angel who served as guide to
this first journey is told with a sublimity which exceeds, by the
distance which God has placed betwixt the earth and the sun, the great
Seraphita |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis: you can't read anything at all?"
"I never told you nothing of the kind."
He picks out a label.
"If you can read so fast, what's that?" he asts.
She is a pink one. I thinks to myself; she either
is corn salve or else she ain't corn salve. And it
ain't natcheral he will pick corn salve, fur he would
think I would say that first off. So I'm betting it
ain't. I takes a chancet on it.
"That," says I, "is mighty easy reading. That is
Siwash Injun Sagraw." I lost.
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