| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: timber except pines, and the greater part of the country lies in
moorland pasture. The country is wild and tumbled rather than
commanding; an upland rather than a mountain district; and the most
striking as well as the most agreeable scenery lies low beside the
rivers. There, indeed, you will find many corners that take the
fancy; such as made the English noble choose his grave by a Swiss
streamlet, where nature is at her freshest, and looks as young as on
the seventh morning. Such a place is the course of the Gazeille,
where it waters the common of Monastier and thence downwards till it
joins the Loire; a place to hear birds singing; a place for lovers to
frequent. The name of the river was perhaps suggested by the sound
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: scales the fence with knightly fearlessness; how the white walls of
the houses, bathed in the moonlight, grow whiter still, the
overhanging trees darker; how the shadows of the trees fall blacker,
the flowers and the silent grass become more fragrant, and the
crickets, unharmonious cavaliers of the night, strike up their
rattling song in friendly fashion on all sides. I would describe how,
in one of the little, low-roofed, clay houses, the black-browed
village maid, tossing on her lonely couch, dreams with heaving bosom
of some hussar's spurs and moustache, and how the moonlight smiles
upon her cheeks. I would describe how the black shadows of the bats
flit along the white road before they alight upon the white chimneys
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: "That's easy to say," cried Bixiou, "but they must be cut off; his
legs are swollen."
Agathe took a pair of scissors. When she had cut down the boots, which
in those days were worn outside the clinging trousers, ten pieces of
gold rolled on the floor.
"There it is,--her money," murmured Philippe. "Cursed fool that I was,
I forgot it. I too have missed a fortune."
He was seized with a horrible delirium of fever, and began to rave.
Joseph, assisted by old Desroches, who had come back, and by Bixiou,
carried him to his room. Doctor Haudry was obliged to write a line to
the Hopital de la Charite and borrow a strait-waistcoat; for the
|
