| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: lest he should be scared at the sight of the weapon. Then,
taking three arrows from the quiver, he struck the mark given
him with the first he fitted to the string. . . . . But
Palnatoki, when asked by the king why he had taken more arrows
from the quiver, when it had been settled that he should only
try the fortune of the bow ONCE, made answer, 'That I might
avenge on thee the swerving of the first by the points of the
rest, lest perchance my innocence might have been punished,
while your violence escaped scot-free.' "[2]
[2] Saxo Grammaticus, Bk. X. p. 166, ed. Frankf. 1576.
This ruthless king is none other than the famous Harold
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: he married Miss Jackson; and with her money, bought in some two-
thirds of Stowting. In the beginning of the little family history
which I have been following to so great an extent, the Captain
mentions, with a delightful pride: 'A Court Baron and Court Leet
are regularly held by the Lady of the Manor, Mrs. Henrietta Camilla
Jenkin'; and indeed the pleasure of so describing his wife, was the
most solid benefit of the investment; for the purchase was heavily
encumbered and paid them nothing till some years before their
death. In the meanwhile, the Jackson family also, what with wild
sons, an indulgent mother and the impending emancipation of the
slaves, was moving nearer and nearer to beggary; and thus of two
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: beginning to get a little out of the confusion into which this jumble of
cross accidents had cast them--it then presently occurr'd to me, that I had
left my remarks in the pocket of the chaise--and that in selling my chaise,
I had sold my remarks along with it, to the chaise-vamper. I leave
this void space that the reader may swear into it any oath that he is most
accustomed to--For my own part, if ever I swore a whole oath into a vacancy
in my life, I think it was into that--........., said I--and so my remarks
through France, which were as full of wit, as an egg is full of meat, and
as well worth four hundred guineas, as the said egg is worth a penny--have
I been selling here to a chaise-vamper--for four Louis d'Ors--and giving
him a post-chaise (by heaven) worth six into the bargain; had it been to
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