| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: was that marvelously merciful power which enables a person, for the love of
others, to bear up under a cross, or even to fight death himself. As Young
had his bright-eyed Indian boys and girls, who had learned Christianity from
him, and whose future depended on him, so Nell had her aged and weakening
uncle to care for and cherish.
Jim's attentions to her before the deep affliction had not been slight, but
now they were so marked as to be unmistakable. In some way Jim seemed changed
since he had returned from the Delaware encampment. Although he went back to
the work with his old aggressiveness, he was not nearly so successful as he
had been before. Whether or not this was his fault, he took his failure deeply
to heart. There was that in his tenderness which caused Nell to regard him, in
The Spirit of the Border |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: and then our last hope would have been gone."
The terror of that gale was on him yet. I let him go on for a bit,
then said, casually--as if returning to a minor subject:
"You were very anxious to give up your mate to the shore people, I believe?"
He was. To the law. His obscure tenacity on that point had in it
something incomprehensible and a little awful; something, as it
were, mystical, quite apart from his anxiety that he should
not be suspected of "countenancing any doings of that sort."
Seven-and-thirty virtuous years at sea, of which over twenty
of immaculate command, and the last fifteen in the Sephora,
seemed to have laid him under some pitiless obligation.
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that
art.
I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve
years old, is no saleable commodity, and even when they come to
this age, they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds
and half a crown at most, on the exchange; which cannot turn to
account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of
nutriments and rags having been at least four times that value.
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I
hope will not be liable to the least objection.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance
A Modest Proposal |
