| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: labor of years, and a severe tax upon his purse.
"Very well," he said, with much heaviness of spirit. "If you
don't like to go to her I don't wish to force you."
And so the question remained for him still: how should he remedy
this perilous state of things? For days he sat in a moody
attitude over the fire, a pitcher of cider standing on the hearth
beside him, and his drinking-horn inverted upon the top of it. He
spent a week and more thus composing a letter to the chief
offender, which he would every now and then attempt to complete,
and suddenly crumple up in his hand.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The Woodlanders |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: revenge. Sometimes, whilst covering Van Baerle with his
telescope, he deluded himself into a belief that he was
levelling a never-failing musket at him; and then he would
seek with his finger for the trigger to fire the shot which
was to have killed his neighbour. But it is time that we
should connect with this epoch of the operations of the one,
and the espionage of the other, the visit which Cornelius de
Witt came to pay to his native town.
Chapter 7
The Happy Man makes Acquaintance with Misfortune
Cornelius de Witt, after having attended to his family
The Black Tulip |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: coast for centuries past, the viceroy decided to rid the country
of this pest. Nine days after the time for which the boat had
been registered, but while it continued unlawfully to float the
British colours, the viceroy seized the boat, imprisoned all her
crew, and dragged down the British flag. This was an insult which
Great Britain could not or would not brook and so the viceroy was
ordered to release the prisoners, all of whom were Chinese
subjects, on penalty of being blown up in his own yamen if he
refused.
Frightened at the threat, and remembering the result of the
former war, the viceroy sent the prisoners to the consulate in
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