| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: it were to be forty years; and that keeping them in my reach
depended entirely upon my perfecting my enclosures to such a degree
that I might be sure of keeping them together; which by this
method, indeed, I so effectually secured, that when these little
stakes began to grow, I had planted them so very thick that I was
forced to pull some of them up again.
In this place also I had my grapes growing, which I principally
depended on for my winter store of raisins, and which I never
failed to preserve very carefully, as the best and most agreeable
dainty of my whole diet; and indeed they were not only agreeable,
but medicinal, wholesome, nourishing, and refreshing to the last
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: out of that Homeric fight and chase; but the spirit was dead, or had
been reincarnated already in Mr. Sheriff Scott, and the degenerate
moorsmen must be content to tell the tale in prose, and to make of the
"Four Black Brothers" a unit after the fashion of the "Twelve Apostles"
or the "Three Musketeers."
Robert, Gilbert, Clement, and Andrew - in the proper Border diminutives,
Hob, Gib, Clem, and Dand Elliott - these ballad heroes, had much in
common; in particular, their high sense of the family and the family
honour; but they went diverse ways, and prospered and failed in
different businesses. According to Kirstie, "they had a' bees in their
bonnets but Hob." Hob the laird was, indeed, essentially a decent man.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: an' the girl gettin' worse every day, and every cint in the bank
gone, an' hardly a chair lef' in the place. An' I says to him,
'I'll go meself. She come in to see Katie th' other night; she'll
listen to me.' We lived in Newark, mum, an' had four rooms and a
mahogany sofa and two carpets, till the strike come in the
clock-factory, an' me man had to quit; an' then all winter--oh,
we're not used to the likes of this!"--covering her face with her
shawl and bursting into tears.
Tom had risen to her feet, her face expressing the deepest
sympathy for the woman, though she was at a loss to understand the
cause of her visitor's distress.
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