| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: gun into the holster; "I'm not going to kill you just yet.
. . . I'll make you my orderly. You'll see that I'm not so
hardhearted!"
Slyly he winked at his companions. The prisoner had
turned into an animal; he gulped, panting, dry-mouthed.
Camilla, who had witnessed the scene, spurred her horse
and caught up with Demetrio.
"What a brute that Blondie is: you ought to see what
he did to a wretched prisoner," she said. Then she told
Demetrio what had occurred. The latter wrinkled his
brow but made no answer.
The Underdogs |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: at the last. Jonah argued that men liked to make a surprise of
their wills, while Martha said that nobody need be surprised if he
left the best part of his money to those who least expected it.
Also it was not to be thought but that an own brother "lying there"
with dropsy in his legs must come to feel that blood was thicker
than water, and if he didn't alter his will, he might have money
by him. At any rate some blood-relations should be on the premises
and on the watch against those who were hardly relations at all.
Such things had been known as forged wills and disputed wills,
which seemed to have the golden-hazy advantage of somehow enabling
non-legatees to live out of them. Again, those who were no
Middlemarch |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: confiding to Hedgspeth his plans for defrauding an insurance
company--a mistake, the unfortunate results of which might have
been avoided, if he had kept faith with the train robber and
given him the 500 dollars which he had promised.
The case of Holmes illustrates the practical as well as the
purely ethical value of "honour among thieves," and shows how a
comparatively insignificant misdeed may ruin a great and
comprehensive plan of crime. To dare to attempt the
extermination of a family of seven persons, and to succeed so
nearly in effecting it, could be the work of no tyro, no beginner
like J. B. Troppmann. It was the act of one who having already
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
