| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: of this Portuguese fellow? Has he bewitched you? Or is it because he
is your sister's son, or because you want to force Marie there to marry
him? Or is it, perhaps, that he knows of something bad in your past
life, and you have to bribe him to keep his mouth shut?"
Now, whether this last unpleasant suggestion was a mere random arrow
drawn from Vrouw Prinsloo's well-stored quiver, or whether the vrouw had
got hold of the tail-end of some long-buried truth, I do not know. Of
course, however, the latter explanation is possible. Many men have done
things in their youth which they do not wish to see dug up in their age;
and Pereira may have learned a family secret of the kind from his
mother.
Marie |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: in an endless chain. It is this that so few can understand;
they will either be always lounging or always at five miles an
hour; they do not play off the one against the other, prepare
all day for the evening, and all evening for the next day.
And, above all, it is here that your overwalker fails of
comprehension. His heart rises against those who drink their
curacoa in liqueur glasses, when he himself can swill it in a
brown john. He will not believe that the flavour is more
delicate in the smaller dose. He will not believe that to
walk this unconscionable distance is merely to stupefy and
brutalise himself, and come to his inn, at night, with a sort
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: Sunday
Pulled through. This day is getting to be more and more trying.
It was selected and set apart last November as a day of rest. I
already had six of them per week, before. This morning found the
new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree.
Monday
The new creature says its name is Eve. That is all right, I have
no objections. Says it is to call it by when I want it to come.
I said it was superfluous, then. The word evidently raised me in
its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word, and will bear
repetition. It says it is not an It, it is a She. This is probably
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