| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: but they lay so far on the one side or the other that no stranger
could have found them from the track. A large part of the Ross is
covered with big granite rocks, some of them larger than a two-
roomed house, one beside another, with fern and deep heather in
between them where the vipers breed. Anyway the wind was, it was
always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as
moorfowl over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little,
your eye would kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the
very midst of the land, on a day of wind and a high spring, I have
heard the Roost roaring, like a battle where it runs by Aros, and
the great and fearful voices of the breakers that we call the Merry
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: of the truth. If he has anything else to say about the art of speaking we
should like to hear him; but if not, we are satisfied with our own view,
that unless a man estimates the various characters of his hearers and is
able to divide all things into classes and to comprehend them under single
ideas, he will never be a skilful rhetorician even within the limits of
human power. And this skill he will not attain without a great deal of
trouble, which a good man ought to undergo, not for the sake of speaking
and acting before men, but in order that he may be able to say what is
acceptable to God and always to act acceptably to Him as far as in him
lies; for there is a saying of wiser men than ourselves, that a man of
sense should not try to please his fellow-servants (at least this should
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: fog. Late in the day three of Karain's chief men, dressed in their
best and armed to the teeth, came off in a canoe, bringing a case of
dollars. They were gloomy and languid, and told us they had not seen
their Rajah for five days. No one had seen him! We settled all
accounts, and after shaking hands in turn and in profound silence,
they descended one after another into their boat, and were paddled to
the shore, sitting close together, clad in vivid colours, with hanging
heads: the gold embroideries of their jackets flashed dazzlingly as
they went away gliding on the smooth water, and not one of them looked
back once. Before sunset the growling clouds carried with a rush the
ridge of hills, and came tumbling down the inner slopes. Everything
Tales of Unrest |
