| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: frenzy? Nothing wrong in a country where the greatest college cannot report
birth of one child to each graduate in ten years? Nothing wrong with race
suicide and the incoming horde of foreigners? . . . Nothing wrong with you
women who cannot or will not stand childbirth? Nothing wrong with most of
you, when if you did have a child, you could not nurse it? . . . Oh, my
God, there's nothing wrong with America except that she staggers under a
Titanic burden that only mothers of sons can remove! . . . You doll women,
you parasites, you toys of men, you silken-wrapped geisha girls, you
painted, idle, purring cats, you parody of the females of your species--
find brains enough if you can to see the doom hanging over you and revolt
before it is too late!"
The Call of the Canyon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: same story is told of Olaf Tryggvesson, of Don Sebastian of
Portugal, and of the Moorish King Boabdil. The Seven Sleepers
of Ephesus, having taken refuge in a cave from the
persecutions of the heathen Decius, slept one hundred and
sixty-four years, and awoke to find a Christian emperor on the
throne. The monk of Hildesheim, in the legend so beautifully
rendered by Longfellow, doubting how with God a thousand years
ago could be as yesterday, listened three minutes entranced by
the singing of a bird in the forest, and found, on waking from
his revery, that a thousand years had flown. To the same
family of legends belong the notion that St. John is sleeping
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: that ye're a man of some penetration; and be it as ye please!"
We set forth accordingly by this itinerary; and for the best part
of three nights travelled on eerie mountains and among the
well-heads of wild rivers; often buried in mist, almost
continually blown and rained upon, and not once cheered by any
glimpse of sunshine. By day, we lay and slept in the drenching
heather; by night, incessantly clambered upon break-neck hills
and among rude crags. We often wandered; we were often so
involved in fog, that we must lie quiet till it lightened. A
fire was never to be thought of. Our only food was drammach and
a portion of cold meat that we had carried from the Cage; and as
Kidnapped |
