| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the
backwoodsman in this country.
Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England;
though we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the
West. There is the home of the younger sons, as among the
Scandinavians they took to the sea for their inheritance. It is
too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to
understand even the slang of today.
Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was
like a dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic
stream in something more than imagination, under bridges built by
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: --the laws of motion, the properties of matter, the qualities of
substances. After having inflicted his theories on any one who is willing
to receive them 'first on his father and mother, secondly on some other
patient listener, thirdly on his dog,' he finds that he only differs from
the rest of mankind in the use of a word. He had once hoped that by
getting rid of the solidity of matter he might open a passage to worlds
beyond. He liked to think of the world as the representation of the divine
nature, and delighted to imagine angels and spirits wandering through
space, present in the room in which he is sitting without coming through
the door, nowhere and everywhere at the same instant. At length he finds
that he has been the victim of his own fancies; he has neither more nor
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs: revolver at Leopold. The king picked up one of the gar-
ments gingerly between the tips of his thumb and finger.
"Hurry!" admonished the American, drawing the silk half-
hose of the ruler of Lutha over his foot. "If you don't hurry,"
he added, "someone may interrupt us, and you know what
the result would be--to you."
Scowling, Leopold donned the rough garments. Barney,
fully clothed in the uniform the king had been wearing,
stepped across the apartment to where the king's sword and
helmet lay upon the side table that had also borne the re-
volver. He placed the helmet upon his head and buckled the
The Mad King |
