| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: real born mother, a thing rarely managed in fiction.
We are all keeping pretty fit and pretty hearty; but this letter is
not from me to you, it is from a reader of R. H. to the author of
the same, and it says nothing, and has nothing to say, but thank
you.
We are going to re-read CASAMASSIMA as a proper pendant. Sir, I
think these two are your best, and care not who knows it.
May I beg you, the next time RODERICK is printed off, to go over
the sheets of the last few chapters, and strike out 'immense' and
'tremendous'? You have simply dropped them there like your pocket-
handkerchief; all you have to do is to pick them up and pouch them,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: or porter, which I entreated him to send with the letter as
soon as he came on shore, that if possible I might have an
answer brought back by the same hand, that I might know
what was become of my things; 'for sir,' says I, 'if the ship
should go away before I have them on board, I am undone.'
I took care, when I gave him the shilling, to let him see that
I had a little better furniture about me than the ordinary
prisoners, for he saw that I had a purse, and in it a pretty deal
of money; and I found that the very sight of it immediately
furnished me with very different treatment from what I should
otherwise have met with in the ship; for though he was very
Moll Flanders |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: quitted London, however, he made a pilgrimage to May Bartram's
grave, took his way to it through the endless avenues of the grim
suburban necropolis, sought it out in the wilderness of tombs, and,
though he had come but for the renewal of the act of farewell,
found himself, when he had at last stood by it, beguiled into long
intensities. He stood for an hour, powerless to turn away and yet
powerless to penetrate the darkness of death; fixing with his eyes
her inscribed name and date, beating his forehead against the fact
of the secret they kept, drawing his breath, while he waited, as if
some sense would in pity of him rise from the stones. He kneeled
on the stones, however, in vain; they kept what they concealed; and
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