| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: embraced me very hard; then held me at arm's length, looking at
me with his face all working with sorrow; and then whipped about,
and crying good-bye to me, set off backward by the way that we
had come at a sort of jogging run. It might have been laughable
to another; but I was in no mind to laugh. I watched him as long
as he was in sight; and he never stopped hurrying, nor once
looked back. Then it came in upon my mind that this was all his
sorrow at my departure; and my conscience smote me hard and fast,
because I, for my part, was overjoyed to get away out of that
quiet country-side, and go to a great, busy house, among rich and
respected gentlefolk of my own name and blood.
Kidnapped |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: perhaps emigrants from Rome, where the glad legions may have
shouted to behold them on the morn of battle.
But if birds were rare, the place abounded with rattlesnakes
- the rattlesnake's nest, it might have been named. Wherever
we brushed among the bushes, our passage woke their angry
buzz. One dwelt habitually in the wood-pile, and sometimes,
when we came for firewood, thrust up his small head between
two logs, and hissed at the intrusion. The rattle has a
legendary credit; it is said to be awe-inspiring, and, once
heard, to stamp itself for ever in the memory. But the sound
is not at all alarming; the hum of many insects, and the buzz
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: the effects of a bucket of water are diverse. They depend on the
kind of flame. A mere blaze of dry straw, of course . . . but there
can be no question of straw there. Anthony of the Ferndale was not,
could not have been, a straw-stuffed specimen of a man. There are
flames a bucket of water sends leaping sky-high.
We may well wonder what happened when, after Fyne had left him, the
hesitating girl went up at last and opened the door of that room
where our man, I am certain, was not extinguished. Oh no! Nor
cold; whatever else he might have been.
It is conceivable he might have cried at her in the first moment of
humiliation, of exasperation, "Oh, it's you! Why are you here? If
Chance |
