| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: up-putting,' the diary continues, `and on both sides of the
ferry much anxiety of mind. Our beds were clean straw, and
but for the circumstance of the boat, I should have slept as
soundly as ever I did after a walk through moss and mire of
sixteen hours.'
To go round the lights, even to-day, is to visit past
centuries. The tide of tourists that flows yearly in
Scotland, vulgarising all where it approaches, is still
defined by certain barriers. It will be long ere there is a
hotel at Sumburgh or a hydropathic at Cape Wrath; it will be
long ere any CHAR-A-BANC, laden with tourists, shall drive up
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: Harry would be one-and-thirty next July, he
declared. Proper age to get married with a nice,
sensible girl that could appreciate a good home.
He was a very high-spirited boy. High-spirited
husbands were the easiest to manage. These mean,
soft chaps, that you would think butter wouldn't
melt in their mouths, were the ones to make a wom-
an thoroughly miserable. And there was nothing
like a home--a fireside--a good roof: no turning
out of your warm bed in all sorts of weather. "Eh,
my dear?"
To-morrow |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: bad light.
Just then, Demian Bledny rolled in, fatter than he used to be
(admirers from the country send him food) with a round
face, shrewd laughing eyes, and cynical mouth, a typical
peasant, and the poet of the revolution. He was passably
shaved, his little yellow moustache was trimmed, he was
wearing new leather breeches, and seemed altogether a more
prosperous poet than the untidy ruffian I first met about a
year or more ago before his satirical poems in Pravda and
other revolutionary papers had reached the heights of
popularity to which they have since attained. In the old days
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