| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: witnessing the very rapid increase of Lady Susan's influence. They are now
on terms of the most particular friendship, frequently engaged in long
conversations together; and she has contrived by the most artful coquetry
to subdue his judgment to her own purposes. It is impossible to see the
intimacy between them so very soon established without some alarm, though I
can hardly suppose that Lady Susan's plans extend to marriage. I wish you
could get Reginald home again on any plausible pretence; he is not at all
disposed to leave us, and I have given him as many hints of my father's
precarious state of health as common decency will allow me to do in my own
house. Her power over him must now be boundless, as she has entirely
effaced all his former ill-opinion, and persuaded him not merely to forget
Lady Susan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: shadows, where the madrona with its leaves, the azalea and
calcanthus with their blossoms, could find moisture to
support such thick, wet, waxy growths, or the bay tree
collect the ingredients of its perfume. But there they all
grew together, healthy, happy, and happy-making, as though
rooted in a fathom of black soil.
Nor was it only vegetable life that prospered. We had,
indeed, few birds, and none that had much of a voice or
anything worthy to be called a song. My morning comrade had
a thin chirp, unmusical and monotonous, but friendly and
pleasant to hear. He had but one rival: a fellow with an
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: Then sings he of the maid so wonder-struck
With the apples of the Hesperids, and then
With moss-bound, bitter bark rings round the forms
Of Phaethon's fair sisters, from the ground
Up-towering into poplars. Next he sings
Of Gallus wandering by Permessus' stream,
And by a sister of the Muses led
To the Aonian mountains, and how all
The choir of Phoebus rose to greet him; how
The shepherd Linus, singer of songs divine,
Brow-bound with flowers and bitter parsley, spake:
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