| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: on down through Altar Valley. They had exerted every influence to
obtain right to connect these ditches by digging through his land,
but Belding had remained obdurate. He refused to have any dealings
with them. It was therefore with some curiosity and suspicion that
he was a gang of Mexicans once more at work upon these ditches.
At daylight next morning a tremendous blast almost threw Belding
out of his bed. It cracked the adobe walls of his house and broke
windows and sent pans and crockery to the floor with a crash.
Belding's idea was that the store of dynamite kept by the Chases
for blasting had blown up. Hurriedly getting into his clothes, he
went to Nell's room to reassure her; and, telling her to have a
Desert Gold |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: the hole from which the dirt had been taken to roof Jacob Kent's
cabin. This knowledge, properly utilized, might prolong things,
he thought; and he then turned his attention to the moose-hide
thongs which bound him. His hands were tied behind him, and
pressing against the snow, they were wet with the contact. This
moistening of the raw-hide he knew would tend to make it stretch,
and, without apparent effort, he endeavored to stretch it more and
more.
He watched the trail hungrily, and when in the direction of Sixty
Mile a dark speck appeared for a moment against the white
background of an ice-jam, he cast an anxious eye at the sun. It
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: But the people of the inn, in nine cases out of ten, show
themselves friendly and considerate. As soon as you cross the
doors you cease to be a stranger; and although these peasantry are
rude and forbidding on the highway, they show a tincture of kind
breeding when you share their hearth. At Bouchet, for instance, I
uncorked my bottle of Beaujolais, and asked the host to join me.
He would take but little.
'I am an amateur of such wine, do you see?' he said, 'and I am
capable of leaving you not enough.'
In these hedge-inns the traveller is expected to eat with his own
knife; unless he ask, no other will be supplied: with a glass, a
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