| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: As though trying their patience, Shiryaev deliberately dried his
hands, deliberately said his prayer, and sat down to the table
without hurrying himself. Cabbage-soup was served immediately.
The sound of carpenters' axes (Shiryaev was having a new barn
built) and the laughter of Fomka, their labourer, teasing the
turkey, floated in from the courtyard.
Big, sparse drops of rain pattered on the window.
Pyotr, a round-shouldered student in spectacles, kept exchanging
glances with his mother as he ate his dinner. Several times he
laid down his spoon and cleared his throat, meaning to begin to
speak, but after an intent look at his father he fell to eating
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: the night, when we caught sight of a figure standing on a little
knoll not forty yards away, and intensely watching our approach.
One glance was sufficient -- although I was personally unacquainted
with the tribe -- to tell me that he was a Masai Elmoran, or
young warrior. Indeed, had I had any doubts, they would have
quickly been dispelled by the terrified ejaculation of 'Masai!'
that burst simultaneously from the lips of our Wakwafi followers,
who are, as I think I have said, themselves bastard Masai.
And what a figure he presented as he stood there in his savage
war-gear! Accustomed as I have been to savages all my life,
I do not think that I have ever before seen anything quite so
Allan Quatermain |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: this kind of letter leaves much to instinctive knowledge--that the
bhusa referred to the big heap of cattle-food over which he had
fallen in Amir Nath's Gully, and that the message must come from the
person behind the grating; she being a widow. So the message ran
then:--"A widow, in the Gully in which is the heap of bhusa, desires
you to come at eleven o'clock."
Trejago threw all the rubbish into the fireplace and laughed. He
knew that men in the East do not make love under windows at eleven
in the forenoon, nor do women fix appointments a week in advance.
So he went, that very night at eleven, into Amir Nath's Gully, clad
in a boorka, which cloaks a man as well as a woman. Directly the
|
