| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: with on the rock at low-water, when some of the artificers
were employed at the railways, and at high-water at the
beacon-house. The seamen having prepared a quantity of
tarpaulin, or cloth laid over with successive coats of hot
tar, the joiners had just completed the covering of the roof
with it. This sort of covering was lighter and more easily
managed than sheet-lead in such a situation. As a further
defence against the weather the whole exterior of this
temporary residence was painted with three coats of white-lead
paint. Between the timber framing of the habitable part of
the beacon the interstices were to be stuffed with moss, as a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: 'Oh, other people have thought the same thing, have they? That's
always the case with my originalities--they are original to nobody
but myself.'
'Not only the case with yours. When I was a young hand at
reviewing I used to find that a frightful pitfall--dilating upon
subjects I met with, which were novelties to me, and finding
afterwards they had been exhausted by the thinking world when I
was in pinafores.'
'That is delightful. Whenever I find you have done a foolish
thing I am glad, because it seems to bring you a little nearer to
me, who have done many.' And Elfride thought again of her enemy
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: "You aimed too well, monsieur," said the baron, "to be avenging only a
paltry quarrel."
And he fainted. Monsieur de Ronquerolles, who believed him to be a
dead man, smiled sardonically as he heard those words.
After a fortnight, during which time the dowager and the vidame gave
him those cares of old age the secret of which is in the hands of long
experience only, the baron began to return to life. But one morning
his grandmother dealt him a crushing blow, by revealing anxieties to
which, in her last days, she was now subjected. She showed him a
letter signed F, in which the history of her grandson's secret
espionage was recounted step by step. The letter accused Monsieur de
Ferragus |
