| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their
dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to
their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have
resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok"
against society; but I preferred that society should run "amok"
against me, it being the desperate party. However, I was released
the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in
season to get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair Haven Hill. I was
never molested by any person but those who represented the State. I
had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even
a nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my door
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: its name over-written, and here and there, "Here is gold;" and
again, "Much gold and silver;" inserted most probably, as the words
were in English, by the hands of Mr. Oxenham himself. Lingeringly
and longingly the boy turned it round and round, and thought the
owner of it more fortunate than Khan or Kaiser. Oh, if he could
but possess that horn, what needed he on earth beside to make him
blest!
"I say, will you sell this?"
"Yea, marry, or my own soul, if I can get the worth of it."
"I want the horn,--I don't want your soul; it's somewhat of a stale
sole, for aught I know; and there are plenty of fresh ones in the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: Accident, however fruitful in surprises we may presume it to be,
can never have taught it the higher geometry wherein our own
intelligence at once goes astray, without a strict preliminary
training.
Are we to recognize a mere effect of organic structure in the
Epeira's art? We readily think of the legs, which, endowed with a
very varying power of extension, might serve as compasses. More or
less bent, more or less outstretched, they would mechanically
determine the angle whereat the spiral shall intersect the radius;
they would maintain the parallel of the chords in each sector.
Certain objections arise to affirm that, in this instance, the tool
The Life of the Spider |
