| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: work, I had a good memory, versatile interests and a considerable
appetite for commendation, and when I was barely twelve I got a
scholarship at the City Merchants School and was entrusted with a
scholar's railway season ticket to Victoria. After my father's
death a large and very animated and solidly built uncle in tweeds
from Staffordshire, Uncle Minter, my mother's sister's husband, with
a remarkable accent and remarkable vowel sounds, who had plunged
into the Bromstead home once or twice for the night but who was
otherwise unknown to me, came on the scene, sold off the three gaunt
houses with the utmost gusto, invested the proceeds and my father's
life insurance money, and got us into a small villa at Penge within
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: smile over his tobacco-pipe with a deal of meaning. 'You come too
late,' he would answer. 'I am a dead man now: I have lived and
died already. Fifty years ago you would have brought my heart into
my mouth; and now you do not even tempt me. But that is the object
of long living, that man should cease to care about life.' And
again: 'There is only one difference between a long life and a good
dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.' Or once more:
'When I was a boy, I was a bit puzzled, and hardly knew whether it
was myself or the world that was curious and worth looking into.
Now, I know it is myself, and stick to that.'
He never showed any symptom of frailty, but kept stalwart and firm
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: it all goes an endless variety of occupations. And what occupations!
Occupations which genuinely uplift the soul, seeing that the landowner
walks with nature and the seasons of the year, and takes part in, and
is intimate with, everything which is evolved by creation. For let us
look at the round of the year's labours. Even before spring has
arrived there will have begun a general watching and a waiting for it,
and a preparing for sowing, and an apportioning of crops, and a
measuring of seed grain by byres, and drying of seed, and a dividing
of the workers into teams. For everything needs to be examined
beforehand, and calculations must be made at the very start. And as
soon as ever the ice shall have melted, and the rivers be flowing, and
Dead Souls |
