| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: and inflated diction and views, could so transmit to his listeners the
inmost spirit of a lesson that even the youngest present absorbed its
essential elements. Also, of studies he selected none but those which
may help a boy to become a good citizen; and therefore most of the
lectures which he delivered consisted of discourses on what may be
awaiting a youth, as well as of such demarcations of life's field that
the pupil, though seated, as yet, only at the desk, could beforehand
bear his part in that field both in thought and spirit. Nor did the
master CONCEAL anything. That is to say, without mincing words, he
invariably set before his hearers the sorrows and the difficulties
which may confront a man, the trials and the temptations which may
Dead Souls |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Flushing seemed to consider for a moment or two, looking straight
at Terence all the time.
"Let me tell you," she said, speaking in nervous jerks, "it's always
about the seventh day one begins to get anxious. I daresay you've
been sittin' here worryin' by yourself. You think she's bad,
but any one comin' with a fresh eye would see she was better.
Mr. Elliot's had fever; he's all right now," she threw out.
"It wasn't anythin' she caught on the expedition. What's it matter--
a few days' fever? My brother had fever for twenty-six days once.
And in a week or two he was up and about. We gave him nothin' but milk
and arrowroot--"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: of the universe, to make a more obvious and lasting advance. Now
Jean-Marie was slow in all things, impenetrable in others; and his
power of forgetting was fully on a level with his power to learn.
Therefore the Doctor cherished his peripatetic lectures, to which
the boy attended, which he generally appeared to enjoy, and by
which he often profited.
Many and many were the talks they had together; and health and
moderation proved the subject of the Doctor's divagations. To
these he lovingly returned.
'I lead you,' he would say, 'by the green pastures. My system, my
beliefs, my medicines, are resumed in one phrase - to avoid excess.
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