| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death by Patrick Henry: if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which
we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble
struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged
ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest
shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!
An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable
an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week,
or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British
guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength but
irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: pupils, though simple and unpretending, was never trite or dry;
she did not speak from routine formulas--she made her own phrases
as she went on, and very nervous and impressive phrases they
frequently were; often, when elucidating favourite points of
history, or geography, she would wax genuinely eloquent in her
earnestness. Her pupils, or at least the elder and more
intelligent amongst them, recognized well the language of a
superior mind; they felt too, and some of them received the
impression of elevated sentiments; there was little fondling
between mistress and girls, but some of Frances' pupils in time
learnt to love her sincerely, all of them beheld her with
The Professor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: moment I had seen the circumstance transplanted from India
and the tropics to the Adirondack wilderness and the
stringent cold of the Canadian border. Here then, almost
before I had begun my story, I had two countries, two of the
ends of the earth involved: and thus though the notion of
the resuscitated man failed entirely on the score of general
acceptation, or even (as I have since found) acceptability,
it fitted at once with my design of a tale of many lands; and
this decided me to consider further of its possibilities.
The man who should thus be buried was the first question: a
good man, whose return to life would be hailed by the reader
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