| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: the effects that Heaven usually directs by a contagion. Among these
causes and effects, this of the secret conveyance of infection,
imperceptible and unavoidable, is more than sufficient to execute the
fierceness of Divine vengeance, without putting it upon supernaturals
and miracle.
The acute penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and the
infection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact caution
could not secure us while in the place. But I must be allowed to
believe - and I have so many examples fresh in my memory to
convince me of it, that I think none can resist their evidence - I say, I
must be allowed to believe that no one in this whole nation ever
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: children; they eat up their parents' purse. What did I do myself, eh?
_I_ never cost my parents a farthing. Your printing office is standing
idle. The rats and the mice do all the printing that is done in
it. . . . You have a pretty face; I am very fond of you; you are a
careful, hard-working woman; but that son of mine!--Do you know what
David is? I'll tell you--he is a scholar that will never do a stroke
of work! If I had reared him, as I was reared myself, without knowing
his letters, and if I had made a 'bear' of him, like his father before
him, he would have money saved and put out to interest by now. . . .
Oh! he is my cross, that fellow is, look you! And, unluckily, he is
all the family I have, for there is never like to be a later edition.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: at whose companion other men stare.
On a corner of their table lay a smeared copy of a
theatrical journal. It caught Sophy's eye and after poring
over the page she looked up with an excited exclamation.
'They're giving Oedipe tomorrow afternoon at the
Francais! I suppose you've seen it heaps and heaps of
times?"
He smiled back at her. "You must see it too. We'll go
tomorrow."
She sighed at his suggestion, but without discarding it.
"How can I? The last train for Joigny leaves at four."
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