| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: his own account at a spot on Durnover Hill--as far as
possible from Henchard's stores, and with every intention of
keeping clear of his former friend and employer's customers.
There was, it seemed to the younger man, room for both of
them and to spare. The town was small, but the corn and
hay-trade was proportionately large, and with his native
sagacity he saw opportunity for a share of it.
So determined was he to do nothing which should seem like
trade-antagonism to the Mayor that he refused his first
customer--a large farmer of good repute--because Henchard
and this man had dealt together within the preceding three
 The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: in marriage; but perhaps he had a sentimental way of considering
business which deceived me. He was a mild, gentle creature,
anyway; and I hope he has got a better situation, and married a
more suitable wife since then.
DOWN THE OISE
TO MOY
CARNIVAL notoriously cheated us at first. Finding us easy in our
ways, he regretted having let us off so cheaply; and taking me
aside, told me a cock-and-bull story with the moral of another five
francs for the narrator. The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid
up, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: that there was no chance of backing him out of the assembly; so he
set his teeth and shivered. In a Keddah at least there was
torchlight and shouting, but here he was all alone in the dark,
and once a trunk came up and touched him on the knee.
Then an elephant trumpeted, and they all took it up for five
or ten terrible seconds. The dew from the trees above spattered
down like rain on the unseen backs, and a dull booming noise
began, not very loud at first, and Little Toomai could not tell
what it was. But it grew and grew, and Kala Nag lifted up one
forefoot and then the other, and brought them down on the ground
--one-two, one-two, as steadily as trip-hammers. The elephants
 The Jungle Book |