| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: contrary, I say that the thing is not really so, but that it was a general
complaint raised by the people inhabiting the outlying villages against
the citizens to justify, or at least excuse, those hardships and severities
so much talked of, and in which complaints both sides may be said to
have injured one another; that is to say, the citizens pressing to be
received and harboured in time of distress, and with the plague upon
them, complain of the cruelty and injustice of the country people in
being refused entrance and forced back again with their goods and
families; and the inhabitants, finding themselves so imposed upon,
and the citizens breaking in as it were upon them whether they would
or no, complain that when they were infected they were not only
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: length perceiving that an explanation was necessary, he gave me
such a one, as on a former occasion I wanted courage to relate to
you, and which, even now, makes my blood curdle in my veins to
remember.
XI
Alack! it is not when we sleep soft and wake merrily that we think
on other people's sufferings; but when the hour of trouble comes,
said Jeanie Deans.--WALTER SCOTT.
"Never did apoplexy produce on mortal a more sudden or terrific
effect than did the announcement of Manon's sentence upon me. I
fell prostrate, with so intense a palpitation of the heart, that
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: it is. And we are part of it. We have our duty to--to our fellow
beings who don't want to . . . to. . . er."
He stammered. She looked up at him with wide eyes, and her lips were
slightly parted. He went on mumbling--
". . . Pain. . . . Indignation. . . . Sure to misunderstand. I've
suffered enough. And if there has been nothing irreparable--as you
assure me . . . then . . ."
"Alvan!" she cried.
"What?" he said, morosely. He gazed down at her for a moment with a
sombre stare, as one looks at ruins, at the devastation of some
natural disaster.
Tales of Unrest |
