| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: me more if I had known how nearly exact were Alan's predictions;
indeed it was but in one point that he exaggerated, there being
but eleven Campbells on the jury; though as the other four were
equally in the Duke's dependence, it mattered less than might
appear. Still, I cried out that he was unjust to the Duke of
Argyle, who (for all he was a Whig) was yet a wise and honest
nobleman.
"Hoot!" said Alan, "the man's a Whig, nae doubt; but I would
never deny he was a good chieftain to his clan. And what would
the clan think if there was a Campbell shot, and naebody hanged,
and their own chief the Justice General? But I have often
Kidnapped |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: white Virgin in the flowered niche above the gold-domed altar
smiled at the little supplicant almost every day.
"Ma foi," said the slatternly landlady to Madame Laurent and
Michel one day, "I no see how she live! Eat? Nothin', nothin',
almos', and las' night when it was so cold and foggy, eh? I hav'
to mek him build fire. She mos' freeze."
Whereupon the rumour spread that Miss Sophie was starving herself
to death to get some luckless relative out of jail for Christmas;
a rumour which enveloped her scraggy little figure with a kind of
halo to the neighbours when she appeared on the streets.
November had merged into December, and the little pile of coins
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: funeral they most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of
earth! from which not the mightiest whale is free.
Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost
survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid
man-of-war or blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the
distance obscuring the swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the
white mass floating in the sun, and the white spray heaving high
against it; straightway the whale's unharming corpse, with trembling
fingers is set down in the log--SHOALS, ROCKS, AND BREAKERS
HEREABOUTS: BEWARE! And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun
the place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, because
Moby Dick |
