| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: because the smell of onions was
fearful; it made Peter Rabbit and little
Benjamin cry.
The sun got round behind the
wood, and it was quite late in the
afternoon; but still the cat sat upon
the basket.
At length there was a pitter-patter,
pitter-patter, and some bits of mortar
fell from the wall above.
The cat looked up and saw old Mr.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: In conversation he is enthusiastic, sensible, and very
grave. His gravity is carried to a high pitch: I heard one
of his mad buffoons (for he keeps two, like the barons of
old) relate the following anecdote. "I wanted very much to
hear a certain piece of music, so I went to the general two
or three times to ask him; he said to me, 'Go about your
business, for I am engaged.' I went a second time; he said,
'If you come again I will punish you.' A third time I
asked, and he laughed. I rushed out of the tent, but it was
too late -- he ordered two soldiers to catch and stake me. I
begged by all the saints in heaven he would let me off; but it
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: devotion to his art, a sort of literary, saint-like hermit?
"'It has set at last,' said Nina to her mother, pointing to the
hills behind which the sun had sunk." . . . These words of
Almayer's romantic daughter I remember tracing on the gray paper
of a pad which rested on the blanket of my bed-place. They
referred to a sunset in Malayan Isles and shaped themselves in my
mind, in a hallucinated vision of forests and rivers and seas,
far removed from a commercial and yet romantic town of the
northern hemisphere. But at that moment the mood of visions and
words was cut short by the third officer, a cheerful and casual
youth, coming in with a bang of the door and the exclamation:
A Personal Record |
