| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: of at least one quarter of the honeymoon, even if she deferred
her introduction to the uncle who was a doctor of divinity (also
a pleasing though sober kind of rank, when sustained by blood). She
looked at her lover with some wondering remonstrance as she spoke,
and he readily understood that she might wish to lengthen the sweet
time of double solitude.
"Whatever you wish, my darling, when the day is fixed. But let
us take a decided course, and put an end to any discomfort you
may be suffering. Six weeks!--I am sure they would be ample."
"I could certainly hasten the work," said Rosamond. "Will you, then,
mention it to papa?--I think it would be better to write to him."
Middlemarch |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: hot roasted bananas, a pine-apple, and cocoa-nuts. After
walking under a burning sun, I do not know anything more
delicious than the milk of a young cocoa-nut. Pine-apples
are here so abundant that the people eat them in the same
wasteful manner as we might turnips. They are of an excellent
flavor -- perhaps even better than those cultivated in
England; and this I believe is the highest compliment which
can be paid to any fruit. Before going on board, Mr. Wilson
interpreted for me to the Tahitian who had paid me so adroit
an attention, that I wanted him and another man to accompany
me on a short excursion into the mountains.
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: believe that climate does thus react on man--as there is
something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires.
Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well as
physically under these influences? Or is it unimportant how many
foggy days there are in his life? I trust that we shall be more
imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more
ethereal, as our sky--our understanding more comprehensive and
broader, like our plains--our intellect generally on a grander
seale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains
and forests-and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and
depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will
Walking |
