| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: what if the track be strait, steep, and stony? he sees it not;
his eyes are fixed on that summit, flushed already, flushed and
gilded, and having gained it he is certain of the scene beyond.
He knows that the sun will face him, that his chariot is even now
coming over the eastern horizon, and that the herald breeze he
feels on his cheek is opening for the god's career a clear, vast
path of azure, amidst clouds soft as pearl and warm as flame.
Difficulty and toil were to be my lot, but sustained by energy,
drawn on by hopes as bright as vague, I deemed such a lot no
hardship. I mounted now the hill in shade; there were pebbles,
inequalities, briars in my path, but my eyes were fixed on the
The Professor |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: minutes in a wonderland of clear, fading shadows, disappearing
vapours, solemn blooms of dawn, hills half glorified already with the
day and still half confounded with the greyness of the western heaven
- these will seem to repay you for the discomforts of that early
start; but as the hour proceeds, and these enchantments vanish, you
will find yourself upon the farther side in yet another Alpine
valley, snow white and coal black, with such another long-drawn
congeries of hamlets and such another senseless watercourse bickering
along the foot. You have had your moment; but you have not changed
the scene. The mountains are about you like a trap; you cannot foot
it up a hillside and behold the sea as a great plain, but live in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: possible suspicion, men who had never heard of the Flying
Scud, who had never been in sight of Midway Reef.
So they came alongside, under many craning heads of seamen
and projecting mouths of guns; so they climbed on board
somnambulous, and looked blindly about them at the tall spars,
the white decks, and the crowding ship's company, and heard
men as from far away, and answered them at random.
And then a hand fell softly on Carthew's shoulder.
"Why, Norrie, old chappie, where have you dropped from? All
the world's been looking for you. Don't you know you've come
into your kingdom?"
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