| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: of such transient genius. His name, yesterday so famous, to-day
almost forgotten, will survive in his special department without
crossing its limits. For must there not be some extraordinary
circumstances to exalt the name of a professor from the history
of Science to the general history of the human race? Had Desplein
that universal command of knowledge which makes a man the living
word, the great figure of his age? Desplein had a godlike eye; he
saw into the sufferer and his malady by an intuition, natural or
acquired, which enabled him to grasp the diagnostics peculiar to
the individual, to determine the very time, the hour, the minute
when an operation should be performed, making due allowance for
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: twilight to the night and throwing a spray and tracery of lantern
spots upon the dark; here was Russia under the noontide, and so
great a battle of artillery raging on the Dunajec as no man had
ever seen before; whole lines of trenches dissolved into clouds
of dust and heaps of blood-streaked earth; here close to the
waiting streets of Constantinople were the hills of Gallipoli,
the grave of British Imperialism, streaming to heaven with the
dust and smoke of bursting shells and rifle fire and the smoke
and flame of burning brushwood. In the sea of Marmora a big ship
crowded with Turkish troops was sinking; and, purple under the
clear water, he could see the shape of the British submarine
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: the younger man were seated over a pipe of tobacco and the
invariable bottle of fine old Jamaica rum, Mainwaring made no
attempt to refrain from questioning him as to the reason for this
singular and ominous transformation.
"I am a man of peace, James Mainwaring," Eleazer replied, "but
there are men of blood in these waters, and an appearance of
great strength is of use to protect the innocent from the wicked.
If I remained in appearance the peaceful trader I really am, how
long does thee suppose I could remain unassailed in this place?"
It occurred to Mainwaring that the powerful armament he had
beheld was rather extreme to be used merely as a preventive. He
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
