| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: second is more difficult, involving a good many characters -
about ten, I think - who have to be kept all moving, and give
the effect of a society. I have three women to handle, out
and well-away! but only Sophia is in full tone. Sophia and
two men, Windermere, the Vanilla Planter, who dies at the end
of Part I., and Rainsforth, who only appears in the beginning
of Part II. The fact is, I blush to own it, but Sophia is a
REGULAR NOVEL; heroine and hero, and false accusation, and
love, and marriage, and all the rest of it - all planted in a
big South Sea plantation run by ex-English officers - A LA
Stewart's plantation in Tahiti. There is a strong
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: hands; the ladder, like a thing of life, reared its bulk from
off the sod; and Challoner, leaping back with a cry of almost
superstitious terror, beheld the whole structure mount, foot
by foot, against the face of the retaining wall. At the same
time, two heads were dimly visible above the parapet, and he
was hailed by a guarded whistle. Something in its modulation
recalled, like an echo, the whistle of the man with the chin-
beard,
Had he chanced upon a means of escape prepared beforehand by
those very miscreants whose messenger and gull he had become?
Was this, indeed, a means of safety, or but the starting-
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: there was the great ivory and ebony crucifix, which of necessity
attracted the eyes. Four slender little altar candles, which the
Sisters had contrived to fasten into their places with sealing-wax,
gave a faint, pale light, almost absorbed by the walls; the rest of
the room lay well-nigh in the dark. But the dim brightness,
concentrated upon the holy things, looked like a ray from Heaven
shining down upon the unadorned shrine. The floor was reeking with
damp. An icy wind swept in through the chinks here and there, in a
roof that rose sharply on either side, after the fashion of attic
roofs. Nothing could be less imposing; yet perhaps, too, nothing could
be more solemn than this mournful ceremony. A silence so deep that
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