| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: rupees in a year. Jowala Singh, the smith, mends the village
plows--some thirty, broken at the share, in three hundred and
sixty-five days; and Hukm Chund, who is letter-writer and head of
the little club under the travellers' tree, generally keeps the
village posted in such gossip as the barber and the mid-wife have
not yet made public property.
Chicago husks and winnows her wheat by the million bushels, a
hundred banks lend hundreds of millions of dollars in the year,
and scores of factories turn out plow-gear and machinery by
steam. Scores of daily papers do work which Hukm Chund and the
barber and the midwife perform, with due regard for public
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: facts and the calculation of insignificant statistics.
Here he would sometimes lament his connection with the tontine.
'If it were not for that,' he cried one afternoon, 'he would not
care to keep me. I might be a free man, Julia. And I could so
easily support myself by giving lectures.'
'To be sure you could,' said she; 'and I think it one of the
meanest things he ever did to deprive you of that amusement.
There were those nice people at the Isle of Cats (wasn't it?) who
wrote and asked you so very kindly to give them an address. I did
think he might have let you go to the Isle of Cats.'
'He is a man of no intelligence,' cried Joseph. 'He lives here
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: guard. Observing Joe watching him as he puffed on his new pipe, he grinned,
and spoke in broken English that was intelligible, and much of a surprise to
the young man.
"Paleface--tobac'--heap good."
Then, seeing that Joe made no effort to follow his brother's initiative, for
Jim was fast asleep, he pointed to the recumbent figures and spoke again in.
"Ugh! Paleface sleep--Injun wigwams--near setting sun."
On the following morning Joe was awakened by the pain in his legs, which had
been bound all night. He was glad when the bonds were cut and the party took
up its westward march.
The Indians, though somewhat quieter, displayed the same carelessness: they
The Spirit of the Border |
