| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: organs of any kind--vertebrae in the one case and legs in the other--have
actually been modified into skulls or jaws. Yet so strong is the
appearance of a modification of this nature having occurred, that
naturalists can hardly avoid employing language having this plain
signification. On my view these terms may be used literally; and the
wonderful fact of the jaws, for instance, of a crab retaining numerous
characters, which they would probably have retained through inheritance, if
they had really been metamorphosed during a long course of descent from
true legs, or from some simple appendage, is explained.
Embryology. -- It has already been casually remarked that certain organs in
the individual, which when mature become widely different and serve for
On the Origin of Species |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: of a pond or puddle? Is not this the rule also for the height of
mountains, regarded as the opposite of valleys? We know that a hill
is not highest at its narrowest part.
Of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, were
observed to have a bar quite across their mouths and deeper water
within, so that the bay tended to be an expansion of water within
the land not only horizontally but vertically, and to form a basin
or independent pond, the direction of the two capes showing the
course of the bar. Every harbor on the sea-coast, also, has its bar
at its entrance. In proportion as the mouth of the cove was wider
compared with its length, the water over the bar was deeper compared
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: bare room in which the only spot of brightness were the rays of
the sun that crept through the high barred windows and touched his
cold face and stiffened form as with a pitying caress. But no,
there was one other little spot of brightness in the silent place.
It was the wild aster which the dead man's hand still held tightly
clasped. The little purple flowers were quite fresh yet, and the
dewdrops clinging to them greeted the kiss of the sun's rays with
an answering smile.
CHAPTER II
THE BROKEN WILLOW TWIG
As soon as the corpse had been taken away, the police commissioner
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