| 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: his training previous to an event which changed his own
destiny and moulded that of his descendants - the second
marriage of his mother.
There was a Merchant-Burgess of Edinburgh of the name of
Thomas Smith. The Smith pedigree has been traced a little
more particularly than the Stevensons', with a similar dearth
of illustrious names. One character seems to have appeared,
indeed, for a moment at the wings of history: a skipper of
Dundee who smuggled over some Jacobite big-wig at the time of
the 'Fifteen, and was afterwards drowned in Dundee harbour
while going on board his ship. With this exception, the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended
notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely
impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected
themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to
the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the
broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly
moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.
I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard,
with its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low
horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent,
attesting the hour of eventide.
Jane Eyre |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: "One evening I felt a shudder; the wind had turned an old rusty
weathercock, and the creaking sounded like a cry from the house, at
the very moment when I was finishing a gloomy drama to account for
this monumental embodiment of woe. I returned to my inn, lost in
gloomy thoughts. When I had supped, the hostess came into my room with
an air of mystery, and said, 'Monsieur, here is Monsieur Regnault.'
" 'Who is Monsieur Regnault?'
" 'What, sir, do you not know Monsieur Regnault?--Well, that's odd,'
said she, leaving the room.
"On a sudden I saw a man appear, tall, slim, dressed in black, hat in
hand, who came in like a ram ready to butt his opponent, showing a
La Grande Breteche |
