| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: has come down to us, the first notable public act in the great
career that made his name immortal.
During the eight years that he was in the legislature he had been
working away at the law. Even before his first election his
friend John T. Stuart, who had been major of volunteers in the
Black Hawk War while Lincoln was captain, and who, like Lincoln,
had reenlisted in the Independent Spy Battalion, had given him
hearty encouragement. Stuart was now practising law in.
Springfield. After the campaign was over, Lincoln borrowed the
necessary books of Stuart, and entered upon the study in good
earnest. According to his own statement, "he studied with nobody.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: will go as far as most people on tinned meats; some of the
brightest moments of my life were passed over tinned mulli-
gatawney in the cabin of a sixteen-ton schooner, storm-stayed
in Portree Bay; but after suitable experiments, I pronounce
authoritatively that man cannot live by tins alone. Fresh
meat must be had on an occasion. It is true that the great
Foss, driving by along the Geysers road, wooden-faced, but
glorified with legend, might have been induced to bring us
meat, but the great Foss could hardly bring us milk. To take
a cow would have involved taking a field of grass and a
milkmaid; after which it would have been hardly worth while
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: of that enthusiasm he really was. Only a wall divided him
from those happy young contemporaries of his with whom he shared
a common mental life; men who had nothing to do from morning till
night but to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. Only a wall--
but what a wall!
Every day, every hour, as he went in search of labour,
he saw them going and coming also, rubbed shoulders
with them, heard their voices, marked their movements.
The conversation of some of the more thoughtful among them
seemed oftentimes, owing to his long and persistent preparation
for this place, to be peculiarly akin to his own thoughts.
Jude the Obscure |
