| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: more than half that distance from the nearest village. It was a
long way for a tired man to walk down every evening with the sole
purpose of joining in family worship; and the road through the bush
was dark, and, to the Samoan imagination, beset with supernatural
terrors. Wherefore, as soon as our household had fallen into a
regular routine, and the bonds of Samoan family life began to draw
us more closely together, Tusitala felt the necessity of including
our retainers in our evening devotions. I suppose ours was the
only white man's family in all Samoa, except those of the
missionaries, where the day naturally ended with this homely,
patriarchal custom. Not only were the religious scruples of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: worth living again.' A wave of admiration, almost of worship, flowed out
from Winston towards O'Brien. For the moment he had forgotten the shadowy
figure of Goldstein. When you looked at O'Brien's powerful shoulders and
his blunt-featured face, so ugly and yet so civilized, it was impossible
to believe that he could be defeated. There was no stratagem that he was
not equal to, no danger that he could not foresee. Even Julia seemed to
be impressed. She had let her cigarette go out and was listening intently.
O'Brien went on:
'You will have heard rumours of the existence of the Brotherhood. No doubt
you have formed your own picture of it. You have imagined, probably, a
huge underworld of conspirators, meeting secretly in cellars, scribbling
1984 |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: by a single house, the walls of which are overshadowed by the
buttresses of Saint-Gatien, which have their base in the narrow little
garden of the house, leaving it doubtful whether the cathedral was
built before or after this venerable dwelling. An archaeologist
examining the arabesques, the shape of the windows, the arch of the
door, the whole exterior of the house, now mellow with age, would see
at once that it had always been a part of the magnificent edifice with
which it is blended.
An antiquary (had there been one at Tours,--one of the least literary
towns in all France) would even discover, where the narrow street
enters the Cloister, several vestiges of an old arcade, which formerly
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