| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: man in that particular respect. I think none the less of you
because you can't quote Browning or Shakespeare--the thing
that counts is that you can appreciate, as I do, Service and
Kipling and Knibbs.
"Now maybe we are both wrong--maybe Knibbs and
Kipling and Service didn't write poetry, and some people will
say as much; but whatever it is it gets you and me in the same
way, and so in this respect we are equals. Which being the
case let's see if we can't rustle some grub, and then find a nice
soft spot whereon to pound our respective ears."
Billy, deciding that he was too sleepy to work for food,
The Mucker |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: de la Garde. A concise history of certain events in the cashier's past
life must be given in order to explain these facts, and to give a
complete presentment of the crisis when he yielded to temptation.
Mme. de la Garde said that she was a Piedmontese. No one, not even
Castanier, knew her real name. She was one of those young girls, who
are driven by dire misery, by inability to earn a living, or by fear
of starvation, to have recourse to a trade which most of them loathe,
many regard with indifference, and some few follow in obedience to the
laws of their constitution. But on the brink of the gulf of
prostitution in Paris, the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure
as the Madonna, had met with Castanier. The old dragoon was too rough
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: impose on your legal adviser; don't try to pass yourself off for
the Duke of Wellington, for that is not your line. Come, I wager
a dinner I can read your thoughts. You still believe it's Uncle
Tim.'
'Mr Finsbury,' said the drawing-master, colouring, 'you are not a
man in narrow circumstances, and you have no family. Guendolen is
growing up, a very promising girl--she was confirmed this year;
and I think you will be able to enter into my feelings as a
parent when I tell you she is quite ignorant of dancing. The boys
are at the board school, which is all very well in its way; at
least, I am the last man in the world to criticize the
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