| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: spoken several times of it already on other accounts, I mean that of
the progression of the distemper; how it began at one end of the town,
and proceeded gradually and slowly from one part to another, and like
a dark cloud that passes over our heads, which, as it thickens and
overcasts the air at one end, dears up at the other end; so, while the
plague went on raging from west to east, as it went forwards east, it
abated in the west, by which means those parts of the town which
were not seized, or who were left, and where it had spent its fury,
were (as it were) spared to help and assist the other; whereas, had the
distemper spread itself over the whole city and suburbs, at once,
raging in all places alike, as it has done since in some places abroad,
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: the broad Atlantic like a hen through a horse-fair. Even so, we
was stopped by an English frigate, three days out. He sent a boat
alongside and pressed seven able seamen. I remarked it was hard
on honest traders, but the officer said they was fighting all
creation and hadn't time to argue. The next English frigate we
escaped with no more than a shot in our quarter. Then we was
chased two days and a night by a French privateer, firing between
squalls, and the dirty little English ten-gun brig which made him
sheer off had the impudence to press another five of our men.
That's how we reached to the chops of the Channel. Twelve good
men pressed out of thirty-five; an eighteen-pound shot-hole close
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: what she felt for him. Nothing should separate her from her father.
She would not marry, even if she were asked by Mr. Knightley.
It must be her ardent wish that Harriet might be disappointed;
and she hoped, that when able to see them together again, she might at
least be able to ascertain what the chances for it were.--She should
see them henceforward with the closest observance; and wretchedly
as she had hitherto misunderstood even those she was watching,
she did not know how to admit that she could be blinded here.--
He was expected back every day. The power of observation would be
soon given--frightfully soon it appeared when her thoughts were in
one course. In the meanwhile, she resolved against seeing Harriet.--
Emma |
