| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: colours as will not make any disagreeable mixture in the breed.
Strength is chiefly valued in the male, and comeliness in the
female; not upon the account of love, but to preserve the race
from degenerating; for where a female happens to excel in
strength, a consort is chosen, with regard to comeliness.
Courtship, love, presents, jointures, settlements have no place
in their thoughts, or terms whereby to express them in their
language. The young couple meet, and are joined, merely because
it is the determination of their parents and friends; it is what
they see done every day, and they look upon it as one of the
necessary actions of a reasonable being. But the violation of
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: you the word fair. I can see it, Herrick, if you can't; you're
breaking down. Don't think, if you refuse this chance, that
you'll go on doing the evangelical; you're about through with
your stock; and before you know where you are, you'll be right
out on the other side. No, it's either this for you; or else it's
Caledonia. I bet you never were there, and saw those white,
shaved men, in their dust clothes and straw hats, prowling around
in gangs in the lamplight at Noumea; they look like wolves, and
they look like preachers, and they look like the sick; Hulsh is a
daisy to the best of them. Well, there's your company. They're
waiting for you, Herrick, and you got to go; and that's a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: marriage, between one man who believed himself to be your destined
bridegroom and another who expected to be so, meanwhile keeping each in
ignorance of how close you were sailing to the other. In Hortense's place
I should have wished to hasten the wedding now, have it safely performed
this afternoon, say, or to-morrow morning; thus precipitated by some
invaluable turn in the health of her poor dear father. But she had worn
it out, his health, by playing it for decidedly as much as it could bear;
it couldn't be used again without risk; the date must stand fixed; and,
uneasy as she might have begun to be about John, Hortense must, with no
shortening of the course, get her boat in safe without smashing it
against either John or Charley. I wondered a little that she should feel
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