| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: But Mackay had most of the elements of a liberal education. He had
skirted metaphysical and mathematical studies. He had a thoughtful
hold of what he knew, which would be exceptional among bankers. He
had been brought up in the midst of hot-house piety, and told, with
incongruous pride, the story of his own brother's deathbed ecstasies.
Yet he had somehow failed to fulfil himself, and was adrift like a
dead thing among external circumstances, without hope or lively
preference or shaping aim. And further, there seemed a tendency
among many of his fellows to fall into the same blank and unlovely
opinions. One thing, indeed, is not to be learned in Scotland, and
that is the way to be happy. Yet that is the whole of culture, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Finished by H. Rider Haggard: saved.
No, the wet had caused the knot of one of the riems to slip
beneath the strain, or perhaps it broke--I don't know. Feeling
the pull slacken the leaders whipped round on to the wheelers.
There they all stood in a heap, their heads and part of their
necks above water, while the cart floated behind them on its
side. Kaatje screamed and Anscombe flogged. I leapt from my
mare and struggled to the leaders, the water up to my chin.
Grasping their bits I managed to keep them from turning further.
But I could do no more and death came very near to us. Had it
not been for some of those brave Swazis on the bank it would have
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: verandahs and immense roofs towered high in the air above the
heads of the crowd, and seemed to float in the glare, looking
much less substantial than their heavy shadows. Lingard, pointing
to one of the smallest, said in an undertone, "I lived there for
a fortnight when I first came to see Belarab"; and Mrs. Travers
felt more than ever as if walking in a dream when she perceived
beyond the rails of its verandah and visible from head to foot
two figures in an armour of chain mail with pointed steel helmets
crested with white and black feathers and guarding the closed
door. A high bench draped in turkey cloth stood in an open space
of the great audience shed. Lingard led her up to it, Jorgenson
The Rescue |
