| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: declined. They were offered by packages, at first of five, then of ten,
until at last nobody would take less than twenty, fifty, a hundred!
Lord Albemarle, an elderly paralytic gentleman, was now the only advocate
of Phileas Fogg left. This noble lord, who was fastened to his chair,
would have given his fortune to be able to make the tour of the world,
if it took ten years; and he bet five thousand pounds on Phileas Fogg.
When the folly as well as the uselessness of the adventure was pointed out
to him, he contented himself with replying, "If the thing is feasible,
the first to do it ought to be an Englishman."
The Fogg party dwindled more and more, everybody was going against him,
and the bets stood a hundred and fifty and two hundred to one;
Around the World in 80 Days |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: granite that rise above it, their sides covered with the leafage of
tall beeches and dark fir trees to the height of a hundred feet. The
trees, with their different kinds of foliage, rise up straight and
tall, fantastically colored by patches of lichen, forming magnificent
colonnades, with a line of straggling hedgerow of guelder rose, briar
rose, box and arbutus above and below the roadway at their feet. The
subtle perfume of this undergrowth was mingled just then with scents
from the wild mountain region and with the aromatic fragrance of young
larch shoots, budding poplars, and resinous pines.
Here and there a wreath of mist about the heights sometimes hid and
sometimes gave glimpses of the gray crags, that seemed as dim and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with
blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening
that new cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and long
voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a
third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness,
yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.
Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the
little Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his
snortings. How I snuffed that Tartar air!--how I spurned that
turnpike earth!--that common highway all over dented with the marks
of slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity
Moby Dick |
