| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: have been punctually and neatly answered. Whenever time is a
consideration, Saint Joseph is the proper intermediary. I took a
sort of pleasure in observing the vogue he had in France, for the
good man plays a very small part in my religion at home. Yet I
could not help fearing that, where the Saint is so much commanded
for exactitude, he will be expected to be very grateful for his
tablet.
This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not of great importance
anyway. Whether people's gratitude for the good gifts that come to
them be wisely conceived or dutifully expressed, is a secondary
matter, after all, so long as they feel gratitude. The true
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: provisions were dependent for their meaning upon the second, and
because to this second document I looked with confidence for a
solution of many mysteries;--of the profound sadness which had,
from the first of my acquaintance with him, possessed a man so
gorgeously endowed as the favorite of nature and fortune; of his
motives for huddling up, in a clandestine manner, that connection
which formed the glory of his life; and possibly (but then I
hesitated) of the late unintelligible murders, which still lay
under as profound a cloud as ever. Much of this WOULD be unveiled--
all might be: and there and then, with the corpse lying beside me
of the gifted and mysterious writer, I seated myself, and read the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: bustle and shopping and larking, the streets were empty and
desolate. Richards and his old wife sat apart in their little
parlour--miserable and thinking. This was become their evening
habit now: the life-long habit which had preceded it, of reading,
knitting, and contented chat, or receiving or paying neighbourly
calls, was dead and gone and forgotten, ages ago--two or three weeks
ago; nobody talked now, nobody read, nobody visited--the whole
village sat at home, sighing, worrying, silent. Trying to guess out
that remark.
The postman left a letter. Richards glanced listlessly at the
superscription and the post-mark--unfamiliar, both--and tossed the
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
