| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: against the future, and set off along the quays to seek employment.
But he was now not only penniless, his clothes had begun to fall in
tatters; he had begun to have the look of a street Arab; and captains
will have nothing to say to a ragamuffin; for in that trade, as in
all others, it is the coat that depicts the man. You may hand, reef,
and steer like an angel, but if you have a hole in your trousers, it
is like a millstone round your neck. The Devonian lost heart at so
many refusals. He had not the impudence to beg; although, as he
said, 'when I had money of my own, I always gave it.' It was only on
Saturday morning, after three whole days of starvation, that he asked
a scone from a milkwoman, who added of her own accord a glass of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: skimpy, was that what one said? The colours weren't solid? Was that what
one said? Under the influence of that extraordinary emotion which had been
growing all the walk, had begun in the garden when he had wanted to take
her bag, had increased in the town when he had wanted to tell her
everything about himself, he was coming to see himself, and everything he
had ever known gone crooked a little. It was awfully strange.
There he stood in the parlour of the poky little house where she had taken
him, waiting for her, while she went upstairs a moment to see a woman. He
heard her quick step above; heard her voice cheerful, then low; looked at
the mats, tea-caddies, glass shades; waited quite impatiently; looked
forward eagerly to the walk home; determined to carry her bag; then heard
To the Lighthouse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: me a better opportunity of keeping up an interest among the members,
which secur'd to me the business of printing the votes, laws, paper money,
and other occasional jobbs for the public, that, on the whole,
were very profitable.
I therefore did not like the opposition of this new member, who was
a gentleman of fortune and education, with talents that were likely
to give him, in time, great influence in the House, which, indeed,
afterwards happened. I did not, however, aim at gaining his
favour by paying any servile respect to him, but, after some time,
took this other method. Having heard that he had in his library
a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
