| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: into which this lost energy is metamorphosed is poured out most
prodigally in every direction. Let us consider for a moment how
little of it gets used in our system. The earth's orbit is a
nearly circular figure more than five hundred million miles in
circumference, while only eight thousand miles of this path are
at any one time occupied by the earth's mass. Through these eight
thousand miles the sun's radiated energy is doing work, but
through the remainder of the five hundred million it is idle and
wasted. But the case is far more striking when we reflect that it
is not in the plane of the earth's orbit only that the sun's
radiance is being poured out. It is not an affair of a circle,
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: friend. The latter, while smoking his cigar, had calculated from the
position of the sun that it must be about five in the afternoon.
"Where the devil are we?" said the stout huntsman, mopping his
forehead and leaning against the trunk of a tree nearly opposite to
his companion, for he felt unequal to the effort of leaping the ditch
between them.
"That's for me to ask you," said the other, laughing, as he lay among
the tall brown brake which crowned the bank. Then, throwing the end of
his cigar into the ditch, he cried out vehemently: "I swear by Saint
Hubert that never again will I trust myself in unknown territory with
a statesman, though he be, like you, my dear d'Albon, a college mate."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: the barking of dogs; how the love-sick sacristan steals past them, and
scales the fence with knightly fearlessness; how the white walls of
the houses, bathed in the moonlight, grow whiter still, the
overhanging trees darker; how the shadows of the trees fall blacker,
the flowers and the silent grass become more fragrant, and the
crickets, unharmonious cavaliers of the night, strike up their
rattling song in friendly fashion on all sides. I would describe how,
in one of the little, low-roofed, clay houses, the black-browed
village maid, tossing on her lonely couch, dreams with heaving bosom
of some hussar's spurs and moustache, and how the moonlight smiles
upon her cheeks. I would describe how the black shadows of the bats
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
