| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: workingmen, that you cannot give up these exalted joys for my sake? A
great sacrifice, indeed!" she went on, scornfully. "This morning I
sent my husband out to fight in your quarrel. There, sir, go; I am
mistaken in you."
She sank fainting upon the sofa. Lucien went to her, entreating her
pardon, calling execrations upon his family, his sister, and David.
"I had such faith in you!" she said. "M. de Cante-Croix had an adored
mother; but to win a letter from me, and the words, 'I am satisfied,'
he fell in the thick of the fight. And now, when I ask you to take a
journey with me, you cannot think of giving up a wedding dinner for my
sake."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: iron girdle and the handful of oat-meal, who rode so swiftly and
lived so sparely on their raids. Poverty, ill-luck, enterprise,
and constant resolution are the fibres of the legend of his
country's history. The heroes and kings of Scotland have been
tragically fated; the most marking incidents in Scottish history -
Flodden, Darien, or the Forty-five were still either failures or
defeats; and the fall of Wallace and the repeated reverses of the
Bruce combine with the very smallness of the country to teach
rather a moral than a material criterion for life. Britain is
altogether small, the mere taproot of her extended empire:
Scotland, again, which alone the Scottish boy adopts in his
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: up-stream from neighbour to neighbour till Bulangi, whose
clearing was nearest to the settlement, had brought that news
himself to Abdulla whose favour he courted. But rumour also
spoke of a fight and of Dain's death on board his own vessel.
And now all the settlement talked of Dain's visit to the Rajah
and of his death when crossing the river in the dark to see
Almayer.
They could not understand this. Reshid thought that it was very
strange. He felt uneasy and doubtful. But Abdulla, after the
first shock of surprise, with the old age's dislike for solving
riddles, showed a becoming resignation. He remarked that the man
Almayer's Folly |
