| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: can be purchased for a shilling, seems no scene for an honest man.
Are there, then, we may be asked, no genuine beggars? And the
answer is, Not one. My old soldier was a humbug like the rest; his
ragged boots were, in the stage phrase, properties; whole boots
were given him again and again, and always gladly accepted; and the
next day, there he was on the road as usual, with toes exposed.
His boots were his method; they were the man's trade; without his
boots he would have starved; he did not live by charity, but by
appealing to a gross taste in the public, which loves the limelight
on the actor's face, and the toes out of the beggar's boots. There
is a true poverty, which no one sees: a false and merely mimetic
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde: thing, Rachel; my life seemed to be quite complete. It was not so.
It lacked something, it lacked a son. I have found my son now, I
am glad I have found him.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. You have no right to claim him, or the smallest
part of him. The boy is entirely mine, and shall remain mine.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. My dear Rachel, you have had him to yourself for
over twenty years. Why not let me have him for a little now? He
is quite as much mine as yours.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Are you talking of the child you abandoned? Of
the child who, as far as you are concerned, might have died of
hunger and of want?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: I asked about the business, and learnt that trade was bad and
the profits cut down sadly; but then the street was not what it
was before traffic had been diverted, but that was done forty
years ago, 'just before my father died,' he said. I got away at
last, and walked along sharply; it was a dismal street indeed,
and I was glad to return to the bustle and the noise. Would you
like to see my purchase?"
Austin said nothing, but nodded his head slightly; he
still looked white and sick. Villiers pulled out a drawer in
the bamboo table, and showed Austin a long coil of cord, hard
and new; and at one end was a running noose.
The Great God Pan |
