| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: compelled to rely, in the one case, upon the untrustworthy gossip
of Mussulman chroniclers, and in the other case upon the garbled
statements of the "Acts of the Apostles," a book written with a
distinct dogmatic purpose, sixty or seventy years after the
occurrence of the events which it professes to record.
It is true, many of the words of Jesus, preserved by hearsay
tradition through the generation immediately succeeding his
death, have come down to us, probably with little alteration, in
the pages of the three earlier evangelists. These are priceless
data, since, as we shall see, they are almost the only materials
at our command for forming even a partial conception of the
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: "My dear child, the young man is totally unknown to me; but unless he
is not a man of honor, so long as you love him, he is as dear to me as
a son."
"Not a man of honor!" exclaimed Emilie. "As to that, I am quite easy.
My uncle, who introduced him to us, will answer for him. Say, my dear
uncle, has he been a filibuster, an outlaw, a pirate?"
"I knew I should find myself in this fix!" cried the old sailor,
waking up. He looked round the room, but his niece had vanished "like
Saint-Elmo's fires," to use his favorite expression.
"Well, uncle," Monsieur de Fontaine went on, "how could you hide from
us all you knew about this young man? You must have seen how anxious
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: "Get that stuff aboard," she commanded quietly.
"That!" exclaimed Wilbur, pointing to the lump.
Moran's blue eyes were beginning to gleam.
"Yes, and do it before the Chinamen see you."
"But--but I don't understand."
Moran stepped to the quarterdeck, unslung the hammock in which
Wilbur slept, and tossed it to him.
"Reeve it up in that; I'll pass you a line, and we'll haul it
aboard. Godsend, those vermin yonder have got smells enough of
their own without noticing this. Hurry, mate, I'll talk
afterward."
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