| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: many things.
"Take a somewhat similar case," continued the tall Cointet after a
pause. "You cut two or three trusses of meadow hay, and store it in a
loft before 'the heat is out of the grass,' as the peasants say; the
hay ferments, but no harm comes of it. You follow up your experiment
by storing a couple of thousand trusses in a wooden barn--and, of
course, the hay smoulders, and the barn blazes up like a lighted
match. You are an educated man," continued Cointet; "you can see the
application for yourself. So far, you have only cut your two trusses
of hay; we are afraid of setting fire to our paper-mill by bringing in
a couple of thousand trusses. In other words, we may spoil more than
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: fiddle-case of a canoe, I also was beginning to grow aweary for my
ocean. To the civilised man, there must come, sooner or later, a
desire for civilisation. I was weary of dipping the paddle; I was
weary of living on the skirts of life; I wished to be in the thick
of it once more; I wished to get to work; I wished to meet people
who understood my own speech, and could meet with me on equal
terms, as a man, and no longer as a curiosity.
And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up our keels
for the last time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully
piloted them, through rain and sunshine, for so long. For so many
miles had this fleet and footless beast of burthen charioted our
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: There was nothing to hold me in Paris any longer, neither hate
nor love. I was exhausted by this series of shocks. One of my
friends was setting out on a tour in the East. I told my father I
should like to accompany him; my father gave me drafts and
letters of introduction, and eight or ten days afterward I
embarked at Marseilles.
It was at Alexandria that I learned from an attache at the
embassy, whom I had sometimes seen at Marguerite's, that the poor
girl was seriously ill.
I then wrote her the letter which she answered in the way you
know; I received it at Toulon.
Camille |
