| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: He spoke to the widow of living and rent,
And where was the widow could say him nay?
Both.
So the knight and the squire were both left in the mire,
There for to sing their roundelay;
For a yeoman of Kent, with his yearly rent,
There never was a widow could say him nay.
``I would, Wamba,'' said the knight, ``that our
host of the Trysting-tree, or the jolly Friar, his
chaplain, heard this thy ditty in praise of our bluff
yeoman.''
Ivanhoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: Where are the following rivers: Pisuerga, Sakaria,
Guadalete, Jalon, Mulde?
All you know of the following: Machacha, Pilmo, Schebulos,
Crivoscia, Basces, Mancikert, Taxhem, Citeaux, Meloria, Zutphen.
The highest peaks of the Karakorum range.
The number of universities in Prussia.
Why are the tops of mountains continually covered with snow [sic]?
Name the length and breadth of the streams of lava which
issued from the Skaptar Jokul in the eruption of 1783.
That list would oversize nearly anybody's geographical
knowledge. Isn't it reasonably possible that in our schools many
What is Man? |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: snug, happy and well-conditioned. He was satisfied with his
wealth, but not proud of it; and piqued himself upon the hearty
abundance, rather than the style in which he lived. His
stronghold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one of
those green, sheltered, fertile nooks in which the Dutch farmers
are so fond of nestling. A great elm tree spread its broad
branches over it, at the foot of which bubbled up a spring of the
softest and sweetest water, in a little well formed of a barrel;
and then stole sparkling away through the grass, to a neighboring
brook, that babbled along among alders and dwarf willows. Hard
by the farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have served for a
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
