| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: this leaves a blank impression, and it is rather by reading
backward in these old musty letters, which have moved me now
to laughter and now to impatience, that I glean occasional
glimpses of how she seemed to her contemporaries, and trace
(at work in her queer world of godly and grateful parasites) a
mobile and responsive nature. Fashion moulds us, and
particularly women, deeper than we sometimes think; but a
little while ago, and, in some circles, women stood or fell by
the degree of their appreciation of old pictures; in the early
years of the century (and surely with more reason) a character
like that of my grandmother warmed, charmed, and subdued, like
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: box shrubs, formerly clipped close to edge the walks, now straggle at
their own will. A few willows, rooted in the stream, have grown up
quickly like an enclosing fence, and half hide the house. The wild
plants we call weeds have clothed the bank with their beautiful
luxuriance. The fruit-trees, neglected for these ten years past, no
longer bear a crop, and their suckers have formed a thicket. The
espaliers are like a copse. The paths, once graveled, are overgrown
with purslane; but, to be accurate there is no trace of a path.
"Looking down from the hilltop, to which cling the ruins of the old
castle of the Dukes of Vendome, the only spot whence the eye can see
into this enclosure, we think that at a time, difficult now to
La Grande Breteche |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: the trees, the houses, the fields, and the long roads
seemed to fly round and round about him till his
head swam. He gave me to understand that he had
on his passage beheld uncounted multitudes of peo-
ple--whole nations--all dressed in such clothes as
the rich wear. Once he was made to get out of the
carriage, and slept through a night on a bench in
a house of bricks with his bundle under his head;
and once for many hours he had to sit on a floor of
flat stones dozing, with his knees up and with his
bundle between his feet. There was a roof over him,
Amy Foster |
