| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: Archbishop, to Heringods, to the Burghershes, to Pavelys, Trivets,
Cliffords, Wenlocks, Beauchamps, Nevilles, Kempes, and Clarkes: a
piece of Kentish ground condemned to see new faces and to be no
man's home. But from 1633 onward it became the anchor of the
Jenkin family in Kent; and though passed on from brother to
brother, held in shares between uncle and nephew, burthened by
debts and jointures, and at least once sold and bought in again, it
remains to this day in the hands of the direct line. It is not my
design, nor have I the necessary knowledge, to give a history of
this obscure family. But this is an age when genealogy has taken a
new lease of life, and become for the first time a human science;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: vista of the forest, appeared the Great Stone Face! And was
there, indeed, such a resemblance as the crowd had testified?
Alas, Ernest could not recognize it! He beheld a war-worn and
weatherbeaten countenance, full of energy, and expressive of an
iron will; but the gentle wisdom, the deep, broad, tender
sympathies, were altogether wanting in Old Blood-and-Thunder's
visage; and even if the Great Stone Face had assumed his look of
stern command, the milder traits would still have tempered it.
"This is not the man of prophecy," sighed Ernest to himself, as
he made his way out of the throng. "And must the world wait
longer yet?"
The Snow Image |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: the talk about flying-machines and the possibilities of
electricity, witnessing that fiying-machines were "dead certain
to come," and that electricity was "wonderful, wonderful"; how he
went and watched the billiard playing and said, "Left 'em"
several times with an oracular air; how he fell a-yawning; and
how he got out his cycling map and studied it intently,--are
things that find no mention here. Nor will I enlarge upon his
going into the writing-room, and marking the road from London to
Guildford with a fine, bright line of the reddest of red ink. In
his little cyclist hand-book there is a diary, and in the diary
there is an entry of these things--it is there to this day, and I
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