| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: you have only drowning ahead - whereas here you have a smash
of beams, a shower of sheet-iron, and a blind race in the
dark and through a whirlwind for the shelter of an unfinished
stable - and my wife with ear-ache! Well, well, this
morning, we had word from Apia; a hurricane was looked for,
the ships were to leave the bay by 10 A.M.; it is now 3.30,
and the flagship is still a fixture, and the wind round in
the blessed east, so I suppose the danger is over. But
heaven is still laden; the day dim, with frequent rattling
bucketfuls of rain; and just this moment (as I write) a
squall went overhead, scarce striking us, with that singular,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: class, they talk, think, and dream possessions. Their
literature, their Press, turns all on that; immense illustrated
weeklies of unsurpassed magnificence guide them in domestic
architecture, in the art of owning a garden, in the achievement
of the sumptuous in motor-cars, in an elaborate sporting
equipment, in the purchase and control of their estates, in
travel and stupendous hotels. Once they begin to move they go
far and fast. Acquisition becomes the substance of their lives.
They find a world organised to gratify that passion. In a brief
year or so they are connoisseurs. They join in the plunder of
the eighteenth century, buy rare old books, fine old pictures,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: for their boldness in going above him for redress, and their life
and that of their fellow-victims became worse than before.
It happened that among the serfs there were some very treacherous
people who would falsely accuse their fellows of wrong-doing and
sow seeds of discord among the peasantry, whereupon Michael would
become greatly enraged, while his poor subjects began to live in
fear of their lives. When the superintendent passed through the
village the people would run and hide themselves as from a wild
beast. Seeing thus the terror which he had struck to the hearts
of the moujiks, Michael's treatment of them became still more
vindictive, so that from over-work and ill-usage the lot of the
The Kreutzer Sonata |
