| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: big pivot rocks, or balancing rocks, as some call them, weighing
all of a couple of hundred tons. Just the thing. I hit back for
camp, keeping an eye open so the bull couldn't slip past, and got
my ammunition. It wasn't worth anything with the rifle smashed; so
I opened the shells, planted the powder under the rock, and touched
it off with slow fuse. Wasn't much of a charge, but the old
boulder tilted up lazily and dropped down into place, with just
space enough to let the creek drain nicely. Now I had him."
"But how did you have him?" I queried. "Who ever heard of a man
killing a mammoth with a hand-axe? And, for that matter, with
anything else?"
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: European boat, was coming in. I invoked the name
of the dead; I hailed: Judea ahoy! A thin shout an-
swered.
"It was the captain. I had beaten the flagship by three
hours, and I was glad to hear the old man's voice, tremu-
lous and tired. 'Is it you, Marlow?' 'Mind the end of
that jetty, sir,' I cried.
"He approached cautiously, and brought up with the
deep-sea lead-line which we had saved--for the under-
writers. I eased my painter and fell alongside. He
sat, a broken figure at the stern, wet with dew, his hands
Youth |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: was to be. I had also a vision of the letter I would presently
address to Mr. Pinhorn, breaking, as it were, with Mr. Pinhorn. Of
course, however, the next minute the voice of THE EMPIRE was in my
ears.
The article wasn't, I thanked heaven, a review; it was a "leader,"
the last of three, presenting Neil Paraday to the human race. His
new book, the fifth from his hand, had been but a day or two out,
and THE EMPIRE, already aware of it, fired, as if on the birth of a
prince, a salute of a whole column. The guns had been booming
these three hours in the house without our suspecting them. The
big blundering newspaper had discovered him, and now he was
|
