| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: the money to be left at midnight to-night at the same
spot and in the same box as your reply -- as hereinafter
described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer
in writing by a solitary messenger to-night at half-past
eight o'clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road
to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred
yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the
right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite
the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box.
The messenger will place the answer in this box and
return immediately to Summit.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: after heating up their stoves, throw away their spare
kindlingwood, which makes the lightning.[147]
[146] Brinton, op. cit. p. 104.
[147] Tylor, op. cit. p. 320.
When treating of Indo-European solar myths, we saw the
unvarying, unresting course of the sun variously explained as
due to the subjection of Herakles to Eurystheus, to the anger
of Poseidon at Odysseus, or to the curse laid upon the
Wandering Jew. The barbaric mind has worked at the same
problem; but the explanations which it has given are more
childlike and more grotesque. A Polynesian myth tells how the
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay: forget."
They had been walking slightly uphill in a sort of trough between two
parallel, gently sloping downs. The trough now deepened, while the
hills on either side grew steeper. They were in an ascending valley
and, as it curved this way and that, the landscape was shut off from
view. They came to a little spring, bubbling up from the ground. It
formed a trickling brook, which was unlike all other brooks in that
it was flowing up the valley instead of down. Before long it was
joined by other miniature rivulets, so that in the end it became a
fair-sized stream. Maskull kept looking at it, and puckering his
forehead.
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