| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: Tom's dog for coming into their country with gunpowder in his
mouth. Tom couldn't help saying that though they did fancy they
had carried all the wit away with them out of Lincolnshire two
hundred years ago, yet if they had had one such Lincolnshire
nobleman among them as good old Lord Yarborough, he would have
called for the fire-engines before he hanged other people's dogs.
But it was of no use, and the dog was hanged: and Tom couldn't
even have his carcase; for they had abolished the have-his-carcase
act in that country, for fear lest when rogues fell out, honest men
should come by their own. And so they would have succeeded
perfectly, as they always do, only that (as they also always do)
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: I could not help laughing aloud. He looked
startled, then joined in the laugh. "No! No!
I didn't mean that," he cried. "What I meant
is that some of them do go soft mighty quick out
here."
Jocularly I suggested the beastly heat as the
first cause. But Captain Giles disclosed himself
possessed of a deeper philosophy. Things out
East were made easy for white men. That was
all right. The difficulty was to go on keeping
white, and some of these nice boys did not know
The Shadow Line |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: and manner, as though already he felt less respect for her.
"Oh, happy, no," she replied. "When I think that I am alone, hampered
by social conventions that make me deceitful, I envy the privileges of
a man. But when I also reflect on the means which nature has bestowed
on us women to catch and entangle you men in the invisible meshes of a
power which you cannot resist, then the part assigned to me in the
world is not displeasing to me. And then again, suddenly, it does seem
very petty, and I feel that I should despise a man who allowed himself
to be duped by such vulgar seductions. No sooner do I perceive our
power and like it, than I know it to be horrible and I abhor it.
Sometimes I feel within me that longing towards devotion which makes
The Chouans |
