| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: shine. A select society at the Cheshire Cheese engaged my
evenings; my afternoons, as Mr. Godall could testify, have
been generally passed in this divan; and my mornings, I have
taken the precaution to abbreviate by not rising before
twelve. At this rate, my little patrimony was very rapidly,
and I am proud to remember, most agreeably expended. Since
then a gentleman, who has really nothing else to recommend
him beyond the fact of being my maternal uncle, deals me the
small sum of ten shillings a week; and if you behold me once
more revisiting the glimpses of the street lamps in my
favourite quarter, you will readily divine that I have come
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: which the white men used to contrive in order to take the eyes of
Indians -- I happened to place it on my breast. It seemed to me
-- the reader may smile, but must not doubt my word -- it seemed
to me, then, that I experienced a sensation not altogether
physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat, and as if the letter
were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. I shuddered, and
involuntarily let it fall upon the floor.
In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, I had
hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of dingy paper, around
which it had been twisted. This I now opened, and had the
The Scarlet Letter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: twenty years without a rag of business or a shilling of
reward. In process of time, they may perhaps be made the
Sheriff-Substitute and Fountain of Justice at Lerwick or
Tobermory. There is nothing required, you would say, but
a little patience and a taste for exercise and bad air.
To breathe dust and bombazine, to feed the mind on
cackling gossip, to hear three parts of a case and drink
a glass of sherry, to long with indescribable longings
for the hour when a man may slip out of his travesty and
devote himself to golf for the rest of the afternoon, and
to do this day by day and year after year, may seem so
|
