| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: certain spots, especially the old spots. In Boston they understand each
other with very few words said. So they do in Charleston. But these spots
of condensed and hoarded understanding lie far apart, are never
confluent, and also differ in their details; while the whole of England
is confluent, and the details have been slowly worked out through
centuries of getting on together, and are accepted and observed exactly
like the rules of a game.
In America, if the American didn't know, he would have answered, "I don't
know. I think you'll have to ask the conductor," or at any rate, his
reply would have been longer than the Englishman's. But I am not going to
accept the idea that the Englishman didn't know and said so in his brief
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: territorial rights. His steward might deign to occupy it, but never,
certainly, the great landed proprietor himself. In the event of
success, indeed, it was his purpose to return to England; nor, to
say the truth, would he recently have quitted that more congenial
home, had not his own fortune, as well as his deceased wife's,
begun to give symptoms of exhaustion. The Eastern claim
once fairly settled, and put upon the firm basis of actual
possession, Mr. Pyncheon's property--to be measured by miles,
not acres--would be worth an earldom, and would reasonably
entitle him to solicit, or enable him to purchase, that elevated
dignity from the British monarch. Lord Pyncheon!--or the Earl of
House of Seven Gables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs: night was moonless but clear. A faint light pervaded the
scene.
Barney sat staring straight ahead, but his gaze did not
stop upon the familiar objects of the foreground. Instead it
spanned two continents and an ocean to rest upon the little
spot of woodland and rugged mountain and lowland that
is Lutha. It was with an effort that the man suddenly focused
his attention upon that which lay directly before him. A
shadow among the trees had moved!
Barney Custer sat perfectly still, but now he was sud-
denly alert and watchful. Again the shadow moved where
The Mad King |
