| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: great white apes, for there lies speedy surcease from suffering;
but insist in your rash purpose to thread the mazes of the
Golden Cliffs of the Mountains of Otz, past the ramparts
of the impregnable fortresses of the Holy Therns, and upon
your way Death in its most frightful form will overtake you
--a death so horrible that even the Holy Therns themselves,
who conceived both Life and Death, avert their eyes from
its fiendishness and close their ears against the hideous
shrieks of its victims.
"Go back, O fools, the way thou camest."
And then the awful laugh broke out from another part
The Gods of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum: The horse obeyed, and although their progress was slow they finally reached
the opposite river bank at a place where it was low enough to enable the
creature to scramble upon dry land.
With some difficulty the boy managed to get his knife out of his pocket and
cut the cords that bound the riders to one another and to the wooden horse.
He heard the Scarecrow fall to the ground with a mushy sound, and then he
himself quickly dismounted and looked at his friend Jack.
The wooden body, with its gorgeous clothing,
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still sat upright upon the horse's back; but the pumpkin head was gone, and
only the sharpened stick that served for a neck was visible. As for the
The Marvelous Land of Oz |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: Brown braiding on a tailor-made jacket does not, however, consort
with hay-wagons. Then we struck into the woods along what
California called a camina reale--a good road--and Portland a
"fair track." It wound in and out among fire-blackened stumps
under pine-trees, along the corners of log fences, through
hollows, which must be hopeless marsh in the winter, and up
absurd gradients. But nowhere throughout its length did I see
any evidence of road-making. There was a track--you couldn't well
get off it, and it was all you could do to stay on it. The dust
lay a foot thick in the blind ruts, and under the dust we found
bits of planking and bundles of brushwood that sent the wagon
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