| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: and make an early return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found
so much to delay him, that it was already long past midnight before
he said good-bye upon the threshold. The wind had fallen again in
the meanwhile; the night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor
a glimmer of moonshine, slipped through the canopy of cloud. Denis
was ill-acquainted with the intricate lanes of Chateau Landon; even
by daylight he had found some trouble in picking his way; and in
this absolute darkness he soon lost it altogether. He was certain
of one thing only - to keep mounting the hill; for his friend's
house lay at the lower end, or tail, of Chateau Landon, while the
inn was up at the head, under the great church spire. With this
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: chalk into hard limestone, I believe, even now; and in more ways
than one: but in ways which would not be very comfortable or
profitable for us Southern folk who live on it. I am afraid that-
-what between squeezing and heating--she would flatten us all out
into phosphatic fossils, about an inch thick; and turn Winchester
city into a "breccia" which would puzzle geologists a hundred
thousand years hence. So we will hope that she will leave our
chalk downs for the Itchen to wash gently away, while we talk
about caves, and how Madam How scoops them out by water
underground, just in the same way, only more roughly, as she melts
the chalk.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: the mocking-birds' notes that fell from a dozen neighbouring shrubs
and trees. It would not have been preposterous for one to tiptoe and
essay to touch the stars, they hung so bright and imminent.
Mr. Kinney's wife, a young and capable woman, we had left in the
house. She remained to busy herself with the domestic round of duties,
in which I had observed that she seemed to take a buoyant and
contented pride. In one room we had supped. Presently, from the other,
as Kinney and I sat without, there burst a volume of sudden and
brilliant music. If I could justly estimate the art of piano-playing,
the construer of that rollicking fantasia had creditably mastered the
secrets of the keyboard. A piano, and one so well played, seemed to me
Heart of the West |
