| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: nothing for me but the ration of bread and salt which they
serve out to the old soldier who has been too modest.
I served my Queen, sir, for forty years--and I should
be ashamed to tell you the allowance she makes me in my
old age. But I do not complain. My mouth is closed.
I am an English gentleman and one of Her Majesty's soldiers.
That's enough said, eh? Do you follow me? And about my
family affairs, I'm not likely to talk to the first comer,
eh? But to you I say it frankly--they've behaved badly,
damned badly, sir.
"Mrs. Kervick lives in Italy, at the cost of HER
The Market-Place |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: bank of a dark river; and the bank was steep and high. (The banks of an
African river are sometimes a hundred feet high, and consist of deep
shifting sands, through which in the course of ages the river has worn its
gigantic bed.) And on it an old man met her, who had a long white beard;
and a stick that curled was in his hand, and on it was written Reason. And
he asked her what she wanted; and she said "I am woman; and I am seeking
for the land of Freedom."
And he said, "It is before you."
And she said, "I see nothing before me but a dark flowing river, and a bank
steep and high, and cuttings here and there with heavy sand in them."
And he said, "And beyond that?"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: VOCES FIDELIUM along with them; only the fool is still on hand and
practises new follies.
Only one thing in connection with the harbour tempted me, and that
was the diving, an experience I burned to taste of. But this was
not to be, at least in Anstruther; and the subject involves a
change of scene to the sub-arctic town of Wick. You can never have
dwelt in a country more unsightly than that part of Caithness, the
land faintly swelling, faintly falling, not a tree, not a hedgerow,
the fields divided by single slate stones set upon their edge, the
wind always singing in your ears and (down the long road that led
nowhere) thrumming in the telegraph wires. Only as you approached
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