| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: with impatience for the forms and the place to write. The latter
convenience, at Cocker's, was obscure and barely adequate, and her
clear voice had the light note of disgust which her lover's never
showed as she responded with a "There?" of surprise to the gesture
made by the counter-clerk in answer to her sharp question. Our
young friend was busy with half a dozen people, but she had
dispatched them in her most businesslike manner by the time her
ladyship flung through the bars this light of re-appearance. Then
the directness with which the girl managed to receive the
accompanying missive was the result of the concentration that had
caused her to make the stamps fly during the few minutes occupied
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: dissimulation, as though even my testimony were too despicable to
be considered, galled me to the blood. But what it was to me is
not worth notice. I make but memorandum of it here; and chiefly
for this reason, that it had one good result, and gave me the
quicker sense of Mr. Henry's martyrdom.
It was on him the burthen fell. How was he to respond to the
public advances of one who never lost a chance of gibing him in
private? How was he to smile back on the deceiver and the
insulter? He was condemned to seem ungracious. He was condemned
to silence. Had he been less proud, had he spoken, who would have
credited the truth? The acted calumny had done its work; my lord
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: sacrifice had been carried out by women and some few men, and that
all of these were dead by their own hands. They asked if Otomie
was also dead. I told them no, but that I would never surrender
unless they swore that neither she nor her son should be harmed,
but rather that together with myself they should be given a safe-
conduct to go whither we willed. This was refused, but in the end
I won the day, and a parchment was thrown up to me on the point of
a lance. This parchment, which was signed by the Captain Bernal
Diaz, set out that in consideration of the part that I and some men
of the Otomie had played in rescuing the Spanish captives from
death by sacrifice, a pardon was granted to me, my wife and child,
Montezuma's Daughter |
