| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: indecent or unpleasant - unless where anybody fell down suddenly or
died in the streets, as I have said above; and these were generally
covered with some cloth or blanket, or removed into the next
churchyard till night. All the needful works that carried terror with
them, that were both dismal and dangerous, were done in the night; if
any diseased bodies were removed, or dead bodies buried, or infected
clothes burnt, it was done in the night; and all the bodies which were
thrown into the great pits in the several churchyards or burying-
grounds, as has. been observed, were so removed in the night, and
everything was covered and closed before day. So that in the daytime
there was not the least signal of the calamity to be seen or heard of,
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: of that monologue; how friendless my father was and uncompanioned in
his thoughts and feelings, and what a hunger he may have felt for
the sympathy of the undeveloped youngster who trotted by his side.
"I'm no gardener," he said, "I'm no anything. Why the devil did I
start gardening?
"I suppose man was created to mind a garden. . . But the Fall let
us out of that! What was I created for? God! what was I created
for? . . .
"Slaves to matter! Minding inanimate things! It doesn't suit me,
you know. I've got no hands and no patience. I've mucked about
with life. Mucked about with life." He suddenly addressed himself
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: expected beat in verse, the beauty in prose of its larger and
more lawless melody, patent as they are to English hearing,
are already silent in the ears of our next neighbours; for in
France the oratorical accent and the pattern of the web have
almost or altogether succeeded to their places; and the
French prose writer would be astounded at the labours of his
brother across the Channel, and how a good quarter of his
toil, above all INVITA MINERVA, is to avoid writing verse.
So wonderfully far apart have races wandered in spirit, and
so hard it is to understand the literature next door!
Yet French prose is distinctly better than English; and
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