| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: sailing breeze. The next time they came out, we would notice
their sticks cut down, their booms shortened, and their after-
leeches nearer the luffs by whole cloths.
As for excitement, there is all the difference in the world
between a ship in trouble at sea, and a small boat in trouble on
land-locked water. Yet for genuine excitement and thrill, give me
the small boat. Things happen so quickly, and there are always so
few to do the work--and hard work, too, as the small-boat sailor
knows. I have toiled all night, both watches on deck, in a
typhoon off the coast of Japan, and been less exhausted than by
two hours' work at reefing down a thirty-foot sloop and heaving up
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: agony! Carley saw it differently. But for the beautiful softness of light
in his eyes, she would have been unable to endure gazing longer.
"Carley, I'm bitter," he said, "but I'm not rancorous and callous, like some
of the boys. I know if you'd been my girl you'd have stuck to me."
"Yes," Carley whispered.
"That makes a difference," he went on, with a sad smile. "You see, we
soldiers all had feelings. And in one thing we all felt alike. That was we
were going to fight for our homes and our women. I should say women first.
No matter what we read or heard about standing by our allies, fighting for
liberty or civilization, the truth was we all felt the same, even if we
never breathed it. . . . Glenn fought for you. I fought for Nell. . . . We
The Call of the Canyon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and
Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old
whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical
trappings and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand
in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in
the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!
CHAPTER 34
The Cabin-Table.
It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale
loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his
lord and master; who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been
Moby Dick |
