| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the distance of the hatch above him.
And while he was thus occupied there came suddenly to him
the vibration of machinery and the throbbing of the propeller.
The ship was moving! Where to and to what fate was it carrying him?
And even as these thoughts passed through his mind there
came to his ears above the din of the engines that which
caused him to go cold with apprehension.
Clear and shrill from the deck above him rang the scream
of a frightened woman.
Chapter 2
Marooned
The Beasts of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: English books are republished in the United States. The literary
genius of Great Britain still darts its rays into the recesses of
the forests of the New World. There is hardly a pioneer's hut
which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I
remember that I read the feudal play of Henry V for the first
time in a loghouse.
Not only do the Americans constantly draw upon the treasures
of English literature, but it may be said with truth that they
find the literature of England growing on their own soil. The
larger part of that small number of men in the United States who
are engaged in the composition of literary works are English in
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: Mame Hucheloup, Matelote, and Gibelotte, variously modified by terror,
which had stupefied one, rendered another breathless, and roused
the third, were tearing up old dish-cloths and making lint;
three insurgents were assisting them, three bushy-haired, jolly
blades with beards and moustaches, who plucked away at the linen
with the fingers of seamstresses and who made them tremble.
The man of lofty stature whom Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Enjolras
had observed at the moment when he joined the mob at the corner
of the Rue des Billettes, was at work on the smaller barricade
and was making himself useful there. Gavroche was working on
the larger one. As for the young man who had been waiting for
Les Miserables |
