| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: Bell; 'it was all too beautiful for grief,' he said to me; but the
emotion, call it by what name we please, shook him to his depths;
his wife thought he would have broken his heart when he must
demolish the Captain's trophy in the dining-room, and he seemed
thenceforth scarcely the same man.
These last years were indeed years of an excessive demand upon his
vitality; he was not only worn out with sorrow, he was worn out by
hope. The singular invention to which he gave the name of
telpherage, had of late consumed his time, overtaxed his strength
and overheated his imagination. The words in which he first
mentioned his discovery to me - 'I am simply Alnaschar' - were not
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: my tobacco, and taught me several ounces of things worth knowing;
but he would never accept any gifts, not even when the cold weather
came, and gripped the poor thin chest under the poor thin alpaca-
coat. He grew very angry, and said that I had insulted him, and
that he was not going into hospital. He had lived like a beast and
he would die rationally, like a man.
As a matter of fact, he died of pneumonia; and on the night of his
death sent over a grubby note asking me to come and help him to die.
The native woman was weeping by the side of the bed. McIntosh,
wrapped in a cotton cloth, was too weak to resent a fur coat being
thrown over him. He was very active as far as his mind was
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: you are about it; but I wish anybody could give Mary a hint that
it would be a great deal better if she were not so very tenacious,
especially if she would not be always putting herself forward to take
place of mamma. Nobody doubts her right to have precedence of mamma,
but it would be more becoming in her not to be always insisting on it.
It is not that mamma cares about it the least in the world,
but I know it is taken notice of by many persons."
How was Anne to set all these matters to rights? She could do little more
than listen patiently, soften every grievance, and excuse each
to the other; give them all hints of the forbearance necessary
between such near neighbours, and make those hints broadest
Persuasion |
