| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: free."
"Why didn't you do it?" asked the lieutenant.
"Come, come!" cried Rochefort. "Did we not swear friendship?
Ah! had any one but you been there, I don't say ---- "
D'Artagnan bowed. "Is it possible that Rochefort has become
a better man than I am?" he said to himself. And he caused
himself to be announced to the minister.
"Let M. de Rochefort enter," said Mazarin, eagerly, on
hearing their names pronounced; "and beg M. d'Artagnan to
wait; I shall have further need of him."
These words gave great joy to D'Artagnan. As he had said, it
Twenty Years After |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: windows and the walls and floors of palaces. The reader will
remember how Villon's mother conceived of heaven and hell and
took all her scanty stock of theology from the stained glass
that threw its light upon her as she prayed. And there is
scarcely a detail of external effect in the chronicles and
romances of the time, but might have been borrowed at second
hand from a piece of tapestry. It was a stage in the history
of mankind which we may see paralleled, to some extent, in
the first infant school, where the representations of lions
and elephants alternate round the wall with moral verses and
trite presentments of the lesser virtues. So that to live in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: carried off in wheel-barrows, by two servants appointed for that
purpose. I would not have dwelt so long upon a circumstance
that, perhaps, at first sight, may appear not very momentous, if
I had not thought it necessary to justify my character, in point
of cleanliness, to the world; which, I am told, some of my
maligners have been pleased, upon this and other occasions, to
call in question.
When this adventure was at an end, I came back out of my house,
having occasion for fresh air. The emperor was already descended
from the tower, and advancing on horse-back towards me, which had
like to have cost him dear; for the beast, though very well
Gulliver's Travels |
