| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: had never before attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of an
approving conscience. But time began at last to obliterate the
freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow
into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and
longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an
hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the
transforming draught.
I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself
upon his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by
the dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical
insensibility; neither had I, long as I had considered my
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: destination was the East African ports and, I think, Madagascar, where a
profitable trade was to be done in carrying cattle and slaves. Captain
Richardson said he might be back at Lorenzo Marquez in two or three
months' time, or he might not. As a matter of fact the latter
supposition proved correct, for the Seven Stars was lost on a sandbank
somewhere up the coast, her crew only escaping to Mombasa after enduring
great hardships.
Well, she had served my turn, for I heard afterwards that no other ship
put into the Bay for a whole year from the date she left it. So if I
had not caught her at Port Elizabeth I could not have come at all,
except, of course, overland. This at best must have taken many months,
Marie |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: cane to be taken from his hand amid the noisy vociferations of the
players, pacifically irritated. Jules, thinking that he recognized
that face, felt an impulse to stop, and at the same instant the
carriage came to a standstill; for the postilion, hemmed in by some
handcarts, had too much respect for the game to call upon the players
to make way for him.
"It is he!" said Jules, beholding in that human wreck, Ferragus
XXIII., chief of the Devorants. Then, after a pause, he added, "How he
loved her!--Go on, postilion."
ADDENDUM
Note: Ferragus is the first part of a trilogy. Part two is
Ferragus |
