| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: get the best of me, that's all. I'm going to seal that slide
down so that it'll stay there for a million years. And when the
last trump sounds, and Sonoma Mountain and all the other
mountains pass into nothingness, that old slide will be still
a-standing there, held up by the roots."
He passed his arm around her and pulled her down on his knees.
"Say, little woman, you sure miss a lot by living here on the
ranch--music, and theatres, and such things. Don't you ever have
a hankering to drop it all and go back?"
So great was his anxiety that he dared not look at her, and when
she laughed and shook her head he was aware of a great relief.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: look at and no one to speak with; you would imagine they were
paralysed or alienated; and yet very possibly they are hard
workers in their own way, and have good eyesight for a flaw in
a deed or a turn of the market. They have been to school and
college, but all the time they had their eye on the medal;
they have gone about in the world and mixed with clever
people, but all the time they were thinking of their own
affairs. As if a man's soul were not too small to begin with,
they have dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a life of all work
and no play; until here they are at forty, with a listless
attention, a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and not
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: Nobody could tell it on you," said he, as though it were some
form of liquor.
I thanked him, as I always do, at this particular stage, with his
compatriots: not so much perhaps for the compliment to
myself and my poor country, as for the revelation (which is ever
fresh to me) of Britannic self-sufficiency and taste. And he was
so far softened by my gratitude as to add a word of praise on
the American method of lacing sails. "You're ahead of us in
lacing sails," he said. "You can say that with a clear
conscience."
"Thank you," I replied. "I shall certainly do so."
|
