| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: said he'd cowhide me till I was black and blue if I
didn't raise some money for him. I borrowed three
dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got
drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and
whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over
town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they
jailed him, and next day they had him before court,
and jailed him again for a week. But he said HE was
satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd make
it warm for HIM.
When he got out the new judge said he was a-going
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: to dangerous impressions. I consider him with great respect.
I have no reason, from any thing that has fallen within my observation,
to do otherwise. But I have not known him long; and he is not a man,
I think, to be known intimately soon. Will not this manner
of speaking of him, Mrs Smith, convince you that he is nothing to me?
Surely this must be calm enough. And, upon my word, he is nothing to me.
Should he ever propose to me (which I have very little reason to imagine
he has any thought of doing), I shall not accept him. I assure you
I shall not. I assure you, Mr Elliot had not the share which
you have been supposing, in whatever pleasure the concert
of last night might afford: not Mr Elliot; it is not Mr Elliot that--"
Persuasion |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: be listened to like an oracle. Most of our pocket wisdom is
conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them
from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their
mediocrity. And since mediocre people constitute the bulk of
humanity, this is no doubt very properly so. But it does not
follow that the one sort of proposition is any less true than
the other, or that Icarus is not to be more praised, and
perhaps more envied, than Mr. Samuel Budgett the Successful
Merchant. The one is dead, to be sure, while the other is
still in his counting-house counting out his money; and
doubtless this is a consideration. But we have, on the other
|
