| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: those secondary curves and little trepidations of direction that
carry, in natural roads, our curiosity actively along with them. One
feels at once that this road has not has been laboriously grown like
a natural road, but made to pattern; and that, while a model may be
academically correct in outline, it will always be inanimate and
cold. The traveller is also aware of a sympathy of mood between
himself and the road he travels. We have all seen ways that have
wandered into heavy sand near the sea-coast, and trail wearily over
the dunes like a trodden serpent. Here we too must plod forward at a
dull, laborious pace; and so a sympathy is preserved between our
frame of mind and the expression of the relaxed, heavy curves of the
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: Newman spoke slowly, with a certain dryness of accent and with
frequent pauses. This was his habitual mode of utterance,
but it was especially marked in the words I have just quoted.
"Jupiter! There's a programme!" cried Mr. Tristram.
"Certainly, all that takes money, especially the wife;
unless indeed she gives it, as mine did. And what's the story?
How have you done it?"
Newman had pushed his hat back from his forehead, folded his arms,
and stretched his legs. He listened to the music, he looked about him at
the bustling crowd, at the plashing fountains, at the nurses and the babies.
"I have worked!" he answered at last.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death by Patrick Henry: she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other.
They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British
ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them?
Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years.
Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the
subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain.
Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we
find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir,
deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert
the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated;
we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have
|
