| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: customs are very different. Englishmen pique themselves on never
opening their lips; Germans are melancholy in a vehicle; Italians too
wary to talk; Spaniards have no public conveyances; and Russians no
roads. There is no amusement except in the lumbering diligences of
France, that gabbling and indiscreet country, where every one is in a
hurry to laugh and show his wit, and where jest and epigram enliven
all things, even the poverty of the lower classes and the weightier
cares of the solid bourgeois. In a coach there is no police to check
tongues, and legislative assemblies have set the fashion of public
discussion. When a young man of twenty-two, like the one named
Georges, is clever and lively, he is much tempted, especially under
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: and the flush of strong drink flooded darkly under the bronze of
his cheeks. He was greeted with round on round of affectionate
cheers, which brought a suspicious moisture to his eyes, albeit
many of the voices were inarticulate and inebriate. And yet, men
have so behaved since the world began, feasting, fighting, and
carousing, whether in the dark cave-mouth or by the fire of the
squatting-place, in the palaces of imperial Rome and the rock
strongholds of robber barons, or in the sky-aspiring hotels of
modern times and in the boozing-kens of sailor-town. Just so
were these men, empire-builders in the Arctic Light, boastful and
drunken and clamorous, winning surcease for a few wild moments
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: But ah! we children never more
Shall watch it from the water-door!
Below the yew--it still is there--
Our phantom voices haunt the air
As we were still at play,
And I can hear them call and say:
"How far is it to Babylon?"
Ah, far enough, my dear,
Far, far enough from here--
Smiling and kind, you grace a shelf
Too high for me to reach myself.
A Child's Garden of Verses |
