| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: Bruce or a Columbus, with a pliability that was all his own.
He did not fight for what the world would call success; but
for "the wages of going on." Check him off in a dozen
directions, he would find another outlet and break forth. He
missed one vessel after another, and the main work still
halted; but so long as he had a single Japanese to enlighten
and prepare for the better future, he could still feel that
he was working for Japan. Now, he had scarce returned from
Nangasaki, when he was sought out by a new inquirer, the most
promising of all. This was a common soldier, of the Hemming
class, a dyer by birth, who had heard vaguely (1) of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: didn't wean me on Monday. One wink of my eye and I see the whole thing.
I'll have no tramps sleeping on my farm," cried Tant Sannie blowing. "No,
by the devil, no! not though he had sixty-times-six red noses."
There the German overseer mildly interposed that the man was not a tramp,
but a highly respectable individual, whose horse had died by an accident
three days before.
"Don't tell me," cried the Boer-woman; "the man isn't born that can take me
in. If he'd had money, wouldn't he have bought a horse? Men who walk are
thieves, liars, murderers, Rome's priests, seducers! I see the devil in
his nose!" cried Tant Sannie shaking her fist at him; "and to come walking
into the house of this Boer's child and shaking hands as though he came on
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: of that ill-assorted union, in which you have accepted the sufferer's
part. Though your conduct has been unfailingly heroical, though your
firmness has never once given way in the exercise of your painful
duties, perhaps, in the silence of lonely nights, the heart that at
this moment is beating so wildly in your breast, may, from time to
time, have rebelled. Your husband's superiority was in itself your
worst torment. If he had been less noble, less single-minded, you
might have deserted him; but his virtues upheld yours; you wondered,
perhaps, whether his heroism or your own would be the first to give
way.
"You clung to your really magnanimous task as Paolo clung to his
Gambara |
