| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: pernicious because the world is heaving with frightful menaces to all the
good that man knows. They would strip life of every resource gathered
through centuries of struggle. Mad mobs, whole races of people who have
never thought at all, or who have now hurled away all pretense of
thought, aim at mere destruction of everything that is. They don't
attempt to offer any substitute. Down with religion, down with education,
down with marriage, down with law, down with property: Such is their cry.
Wipe the slate blank, they say, and then we'll see what we'll write on
it. Amid this stands Germany with her unchanged purpose to own the earth;
and Japan is doing some thinking. Amid this also is the Anglo-Saxon race,
the race that has brought our law, our order, our safety, our freedom
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: Pancracio had cut his neck in half, and two streams of
scarlet spurted from the wound.
"Kill the soldiers, kill them all!"
Pancracio and Manteca surpassed the others in the
savagery of their slaughter, and finished up with the
wounded. Montanez, exhausted, let his arm fall; it hung
limp to his side. A gentle expression still filled his glance;
his eyes shone; he was naive as a child, unmoral as a
hyena.
"Here's one who's not dead yet," Quail shouted.
Pancracio ran up. The little blond captain with curled
The Underdogs |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: a bush. At the same moment, from another bush opposite me out burst one
of the cubs and galloped back towards the burnt pan. I whipped round
and let drive a snap shot that tipped him head over heels, breaking his
back within two inches of the root of the tail, and there he lay
helpless but glaring. Tom afterwards killed him with his assegai. I
opened the breech of the gun and hurriedly pulled out the old case,
which, to judge from what ensued, must, I suppose, have burst and left a
portion of its fabric sticking to the barrel. At any rate, when I tried
to, get in the new cartridge it would only enter half-way; and--would
you believe it?--this was the moment that the lioness, attracted no
doubt by the outcry of her cub, chose to put in an appearance. There
Long Odds |
