| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: something to say to her. That's why I'm dressing."
My point was conceded, but there were long delays. Whether the
household had my ultimatum or whether she told Beatrice directly
I do not know, and what Lady Osprey can have made of it in the
former case I don't imagine.
At last Beatrice came and stood by my bedside. "Well?" she said.
"All I want to say," I said with the querulous note of a
misunderstood child, "is that I can't take this as final. I want
to see you and talk when I'm better, and write. I can't do
anything now. I can't argue."
I was overtaken with self-pity and began to snivel, "I can't
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: a few yards from me. At sight of me his ears went flat, and his
lips parted in a characteristic grin.
The submarine was withdrawing toward the north, but all the time
it was shelling the open boats, three of them, loaded to the
gunwales with survivors. Fortunately the small boats presented
a rather poor target, which, combined with the bad marksmanship
of the Germans preserved their occupants from harm; and after a
few minutes a blotch of smoke appeared upon the eastern horizon
and the U-boat submerged and disappeared.
All the time the lifeboats has been pulling away from the danger
of the sinking liner, and now, though I yelled at the top of my
The Land that Time Forgot |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: will the commonly-assumed hybrid nature of the intermediate links always
remove the difficulty. In very many cases, however, one form is ranked as
a variety of another, not because the intermediate links have actually been
found, but because analogy leads the observer to suppose either that they
do now somewhere exist, or may formerly have existed; and here a wide door
for the entry of doubt and conjecture is opened.
Hence, in determining whether a form should be ranked as a species or a
variety, the opinion of naturalists having sound judgment and wide
experience seems the only guide to follow. We must, however, in many
cases, decide by a majority of naturalists, for few well-marked and
well-known varieties can be named which have not been ranked as species by
On the Origin of Species |
