| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: quiet clique of the exclusive, studious and cultured; no rotten
borough of the arts. All classes rub shoulders on the greasy
benches. The raffish young gentleman in gloves must measure his
scholarship with the plain, clownish laddie from the parish school.
They separate, at the session's end, one to smoke cigars about a
watering-place, the other to resume the labours of the field beside
his peasant family. The first muster of a college class in
Scotland is a scene of curious and painful interest; so many lads,
fresh from the heather, hang round the stove in cloddish
embarrassment, ruffled by the presence of their smarter comrades,
and afraid of the sound of their own rustic voices. It was in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: and refined them that they made record of things never before
perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their
separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on
the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves
and the veining of each leaf -- he saw the very insects upon
them: the locusts, the brilliant bodied flies, the gray
spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted
the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million
blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above
the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies'
wings, the strokes of the water spiders' legs, like oars
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: The soldier with the sling sat down on a hammock near Gusev and
said in an undertone:
"And you, Gusev, are not long for this world. You will never get
to Russia."
"Did the doctor or his assistant say so?" asked Gusev.
"It isn't that they said so, but one can see it. . . . One can
see directly when a man's going to die. You don't eat, you don't
drink; it's dreadful to see how thin you've got. It's
consumption, in fact. I say it, not to upset you, but because
maybe you would like to have the sacrament and extreme unction.
And if you have any money you had better give it to the senior
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