| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: happiness. And we stand often abashed and sometimes revolted, at
those partialities of fate by which we profit most. It was so with
me on that November night: I felt that our positions should be
changed. It was you, dear Symonds, who should have gone upon that
voyage and written this account. With your rich stores of
knowledge, you could have remarked and understood a thousand things
of interest and beauty that escaped my ignorance; and the brilliant
colours of your style would have carried into a thousand sickrooms
the sea air and the strong sun of tropic islands. It was otherwise
decreed. But suffer me at least to connect you, if only in name
and only in the fondness of imagination, with the voyage of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: say. He had survived his strength, his usefulness, his very
wisdom. He wore long, green, worsted stockings, pulled up above
the knee over his trousers, a sort of woollen nightcap on his
hairless cranium, and wooden clogs on his feet. Without his
hooded cloak he looked like a peasant. Half a dozen hands would
be extended to help him on board, but afterwards he was left
pretty much to his own thoughts. Of course he never did any
work, except, perhaps, to cast off some rope when hailed: "He,
l'Ancien! let go the halyards there, at your hand"--or some such
request of an easy kind.
No one took notice in any way of the chuckling within the shadow
Some Reminiscences |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: hours, there was a chance of life for me, if not I must die.
Now when I was led out of the sanctuary of Tezcat, I wondered
because the princess Otomie, or rather the goddess Atla as she was
then called, was standing among the chief priests and disputing
with them, for I had seen her bow her head at the door of the holy
place, and thought that it was in token of farewell, seeing that
she was the last of the four women to leave me. Of what she
disputed I could not hear because of the din of battle, but the
argument was keen and it seemed to me that the priests were
somewhat dismayed at her words, and yet had a fierce joy in them.
It appeared also that she won her cause, for presently they bowed
Montezuma's Daughter |
