| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: which is, however, not disagreeable.
I had only a couple of glasses of this, and nothing else.
When I got on the coach, the driver had not taken his seat,
and I saw him talking to the landlady.
They were evidently talking of me, for every now and then they looked at me,
and some of the people who were sitting on the bench outside the door--
came and listened, and then looked at me, most of them pityingly.
I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words, for there were
many nationalities in the crowd, so I quietly got my polyglot dictionary
from my bag and looked them out.
I must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were
Dracula |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: way, too. I was very anxious to have him landed before I began
to handle the cargo. Almayer remained looking up at me for a
long while, with incredulous and melancholy eyes, as though it
were not a safe thing to believe in my statement. This pathetic
mistrust in the favourable issue of any sort of affair touched me
deeply, and I added:
"He doesn't seem a bit the worse for the passage. He's a nice
pony, too."
Almayer was not to be cheered up; for all answer he cleared his
throat and looked down again at his feet. I tried to close with
him on another tack.
A Personal Record |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that
such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect
following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that
it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases,
can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice.
At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy
of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people,
is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court,
the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties
in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers,
having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands
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