| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Tearing it open I read:
'Meet me to-morrow hotel Raleigh Richmond.
'JOHN CARTER'
Early the next morning I took the first train for Richmond
and within two hours was being ushered into the room occupied
by John Carter.
As I entered he rose to greet me, his old-time cordial
smile of welcome lighting his handsome face. Apparently he
had not aged a minute, but was still the straight, clean-limbed
fighting-man of thirty. His keen grey eyes were undimmed, and
the only lines upon his face were the lines of iron character and
The Gods of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round -- spinning
like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now
distant bridge, fort and men, all were commingled and
blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only;
circular horizontal streaks of color -- that was all he saw.
He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with
a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and
sick. In few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the
foot of the left bank of the stream -- the southern bank --
and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his
enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: to their deceased kings, and the Christian world hath improved
on the plan, by doing the same to their living ones. How impious
is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst
of his splendor is crumbling into dust!
As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified
on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the
authority of scripture; for the will of the Almighty, as declared
by Gideon and the prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves of government
by kings. All anti-monarchical parts of scripture have been very smoothly
glossed over in monarchical governments, but they undoubtedly merit the
attention of countries which have their governments yet to form.
Common Sense |
