| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: added that he would not be a hangman any more.
"And what about being flogged?" cried the
governor of the prison.
"I will have to bear it, as the law commands
us not to kill."
"Did you get that from Pelageushkine? A
nice sort of a prison prophet! You just wait and
see what this will cost you!"
When Mahin was told of that incident, he was
greatly impressed by the fact of Stepan's influence
on the hangman, who refused to do his duty, run-
The Forged Coupon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: may have made her see her own mischance, the blank she had drawn
in life, more bitterly. She did not see it bitterly now. Death
is honest; all things grew clear to her, going down into the
valley of the shadow; so, wakening to the consciousness of
stifled powers and ungiven happiness, she saw that the fault was
not hers, nor His who had appointed her lot; He had helped her to
bear it,--bearing worse himself. She did not say once, "I might
have been," but day by day, more surely, "I shall be." There was
not a tear on the homely faces turning from her bed, not a tint
of colour in the flowers they brought her, not a shiver of light
in the ashy sky, that did not make her more sure of that which
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: hardly stand! Here is my shawl, sit down upon it here in the
corner, and I will beat your eggs. See, I have brought a fork too;
I should have been a good person to take care of Jacobites or
Covenanters in old days! You shall have more to eat this evening;
Ronald is to bring it you from town. We have money enough,
although no food that we can call our own. Ah, if Ronald and I
kept house, you should not be lying in this shed! He admires you
so much.'
'My dear friend,' said I, 'for God's sake do not embarrass me with
more alms. I loved to receive them from that hand, so long as they
were needed; but they are so no more, and whatever else I may lack
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