| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: As for me, I sat down upon an ant-heap and whistled a whole hymn tune
that my mother had taught me before I could think at all. To be left
the guardian of Mameena! Talk of a "damnosa hereditas," a terrible and
mischievous inheritance--why, this was the worst that ever I heard of.
A servant in my house indeed, knowing what _I_ did about her! Why, I
had sooner share the "good fortune" which Umbelazi anticipated beneath
the sod. However, that was not in the question, and without it the
alternative of acting as her guardian was bad enough, though I comforted
myself with the reflection that the circumstances in which this would
become necessary might never arise. For, alas! I was sure that if they
did arise I should have to live up to them. True, I had made no promise
Child of Storm |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: with firs, birch-trees, and larches, mingled with a few oaks and
beeches, the richest coloring of all the varied tapestries which
Nature in these northern regions spreads upon the surface of her
rugged rocks. The eye can readily mark the line where the soil, warmed
by the rays of the sun, bears cultivation and shows the native growth
of the Norwegian flora. Here the expanse of the fiord is broad enough
to allow the sea, dashed back by the Falberg, to spend its expiring
force in gentle murmurs upon the lower slope of these hills,--a shore
bordered with finest sand, strewn with mica and sparkling pebbles,
porphyry, and marbles of a thousand tints, brought from Sweden by the
river floods, together with ocean waifs, shells, and flowers of the
Seraphita |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: They say, 'If we get the British Government here, they'll be giving the
niggers land to live on; and let them have the vote, and get civilised and
educated, and all that sort of thing; but Cecil Rhodes, he'll keep their
noses to the grindstone.' 'I prefer land to niggers,' he says. They say
he's going to parcel them out, and make them work on our lands whether they
like it or not--just as good as having slaves, you know: and you haven't
the bother of looking after them when they're old. Now, there I'm with
Rhodes; I think it's an awfully good move. We don't come out here to work;
it's all very well in England; but we've come here to make money, and how
are we to make it, unless you get niggers to work for you, or start a
syndicate? He's death on niggers, is Rhodes!" said Peter, meditating;
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