| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: she'd say, day after day, that weak she could bare lift a snow-
shoe and her feet raw with the work. 'Never mind. I'd sooner be
flat-bellied of hunger and be your woman, Tommy, than have a
potlach every day and be Chief George's klooch.' George was chief
of the Chilcoots, you know, and wanted her bad.
"Great days, those. Was a likely chap myself when I struck the
coast. Jumped a whaler, the Pole Star, at Unalaska, and worked my
way down to Sitka on an otter hunter. Picked up with Happy Jack
there--know him?"
"Had charge of my traps for me," Dick answered, "down on the
Columbia. Pretty wild, wasn't he, with a warm place in his heart
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: "On'y foreign tongues used in the days of the Tower of Babel,
when no two families spoke alike. They read that sort of thing
as fast as a night-hawk will whir. 'Tis all learning there--
nothing but learning, except religion. And that's learning too,
for I never could understand it. Yes, 'tis a serious-minded place.
Not but there's wenches in the streets o' nights.... You know,
I suppose, that they raise pa'sons there like radishes in a bed?
And though it do take--how many years, Bob?--five years to turn
a lirruping hobble-de-hoy chap into a solemn preaching man
with no corrupt passions, they'll do it, if it can be done,
and polish un off like the workmen they be, and turn un out wi'
Jude the Obscure |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: Yes; in spite of Miss Yonge, who introduced me to the name of
d'Artagnan only to dissuade me from a nearer knowledge of the man,
I have to add morality. There is no quite good book without a good
morality; but the world is wide, and so are morals. Out of two
people who have dipped into Sir Richard Burton's THOUSAND AND ONE
NIGHTS, one shall have been offended by the animal details; another
to whom these were harmless, perhaps even pleasing, shall yet have
been shocked in his turn by the rascality and cruelty of all the
characters. Of two readers, again, one shall have been pained by
the morality of a religious memoir, one by that of the VICOMTE DE
BRAGELONNE. And the point is that neither need be wrong. We shall
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