| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: rivers well stocked with fish, the natives peaceable and
friendly. There were easy communications with the interior by the
upper waters of the Columbia and the lateral stream of the
Oakinagan, while the downward current of the Columbia furnished a
highway to Astoria.
Availing himself, therefore, of the driftwood which had collected
in quantities in the neighboring bends of the river, Mr. Stuart
and his men set to work to erect a house, which in a little while
was sufficiently completed for their residence; and thus was
established the first interior post of the company. We will now
return to notice the progress of affairs at the mouth of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: the Weald. . . . It is after all not so great a country this
Sussex, nor so hilly, from deepest valley to highest crest is not
six hundred feet, yet what a greatness of effect it can achieve!
There is something in those downland views which, like sea views,
lifts a mind out to the skies. All England it seemed was there to
Benham's vision, and the purpose of the English, and his own purpose
in the world. For a long time he surveyed the large delicacy of the
detail before him, the crests, the tree-protected houses, the fields
and farmsteads, the distant gleams of water. And then he became
interested in the men who were working in the chalk pit down below.
They at any rate were not troubled with the problem of what to do
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: soon forgot to remember any contact with him or any incident
connected with him. The dozens of townspeople, still alive, who
had known of him or known about him in the first twenty-three
years of his life were in the same unremembering condition: if
they knew of any incident connected with that period of his life
they didn't tell about it. Would the if they had been asked? It
is most likely. Were they asked? It is pretty apparent that
they were not. Why weren't they? It is a very plausible guess
that nobody there or elsewhere was interested to know.
For seven years after Shakespeare's death nobody seems to have been
interested in him. Then the quarto was published, and Ben Jonson
What is Man? |
