| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: children; urged on by her stirring example, Thomas Lincoln
supplied the yet unfinished cabin with floor, door, and windows,
and life became more comfortable for all its inmates, contentment
if not happiness reigning in the little home.
The new stepmother quickly became very fond of Abraham, and
encouraged him in every way in her power to study and improve
himself. The chances for this were few enough. Mr. Lincoln has
left us a vivid picture of the situation. "It was," he once
wrote, "a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals
still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools,
so-called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: another boatful of pilots would relieve us--and we should steer
for the old Phoenician port, dominated, watched over from the
ridge of a dust-grey arid hill by the red-and-white-striped pile
of the Notre Dame de la Garde.
All this came to pass as I had foreseen in the fullness of my
very recent experience. But also something not foreseen by me
did happen, something which causes me to remember my last outing
with the pilots. It was on this occasion that my hand touched,
for the first time, the side of an English ship.
No fresh breeze had come with the dawn, only the steady little
draught got a more keen edge on it as the eastern sky became
Some Reminiscences |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: whereas, the more lively Eugenie needed restraint. There are many
charming beings misused by fate,--beings who ought by rights to
prosper in this life, but who live and die unhappy, tortured by some
evil genius, the victims of unfortunate circumstances. The innocent
and naturally light-hearted Eugenie had fallen into the hands and
beneath the malicious despotism of a self-made man on leaving the
maternal prison. Angelique, whose nature inclined her to deeper
sentiments, was thrown into the upper spheres of Parisian social life,
with the bridle lying loose upon her neck.
CHAPTER II
A CONFIDENCE BETWEEN SISTERS
|
