| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: first thing that occurred to him was to free Mukhorty's leg
from the rein. Having done that, and tethered him to the iron
cramp at the front of the sledge where he had been before, he
was going round the horse's quarters to put the breechband and
pad straight and cover him with the cloth, but at that moment
he noticed that something was moving in the sledge and Nikita's
head rose up out of the snow that covered it. Nikita, who was
half frozen, rose with great difficulty and sat up, moving his
hand before his nose in a strange manner just as if he were
driving away flies. He waved his hand and said something, and
seemed to Vasili Andreevich to be calling him. Vasili
Master and Man |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: of eight and nine, to go to bed: The maid, as she was warming my
bed, with a curiosity natural to young wenches, runs to the
window, and asks of one passing the street, who the bell toll'd
for? Dr. Partridge, says he, that famous almanack-maker, who died
suddenly this evening: The poor girl provoked, told him he ly'd
like a rascal; the other very sedately reply'd, the sexton had so
informed him, and if false, he was to blame for imposing upon a
stranger. She asked a second, and a third, as they passed, and
every one was in the same tone. Now I don't say these are
accomplices to a certain astrological 'squire, and that one
Bickerstaff might be sauntring thereabouts; because I will assert
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: father of her children? He always ended by touching some sensitive
chord in his wife's mind; and he seemed to find a domineering pleasure
in making it sound. Sometimes he tried gloomy silence and a morbid
depression, which always alarmed his wife and made her pay him the
most tender attentions. Like petted children, who exercise their power
without thinking of the distress of their mother, he would let her
wait upon him as upon Jacques and Madeleine, of whom he was jealous.
I discovered at last that in small things as well as in great ones the
count acted towards his servants, his children, his wife, precisely as
he had acted to me about the backgammon. The day when I understood,
root and branch, these difficulties, which like a rampant overgrowth
The Lily of the Valley |
