| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: And he knelt down, an example that we all followed except Umslopogaas,
who still stood in the background, grimly leaning on Inkosi-kaas.
The fierce old Zulu had no gods and worshipped nought, unless
it were his battleaxe.
'Oh God of gods!' began the clergyman, his deep voice, tremulous
with emotion, echoing up in the silence even to the leafy roof;
'Protector of the oppressed, Refuge of those in danger, Guardian
of the helpless, hear Thou our prayer! Almighty Father, to Thee
we come in supplication. Hear Thou our prayer! Behold, one
child hast Thou given us -- an innocent child, nurtured in Thy
knowledge -- and now she lies beneath the shadow of the sword,
Allan Quatermain |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: already, in the letter to Frank Scott, there are two words of hope:
his friends in London, his love for his profession. The last might
have saved him; for he was ere long to pass into a new sphere,
where all his faculties were to be tried and exercised, and his
life to be filled with interest and effort. But it was not left to
engineering: another and more influential aim was to be set before
him. He must, in any case, have fallen in love; in any case, his
love would have ruled his life; and the question of choice was, for
the descendant of two such families, a thing of paramount
importance. Innocent of the world, fiery, generous, devoted as he
was, the son of the wild Jacksons and the facile Jenkins might have
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: burgher families, and required a certain number of aldermen and
burgomasters in the pedigree of every bride-elect before admitting her
to the family. They sought their wives in Bruges or Ghent, in Liege or
in Holland; so that the time-honored domestic customs might be
perpetuated around their hearthstones. This social group became more
and more restricted, until, at the close of the last century, it
mustered only some seven or eight families of the parliamentary
nobility, whose manners and flowing robes of office and magisterial
gravity (partly Spanish) harmonized well with the habits of their
life.
The inhabitants of Douai held the family in a religious esteem that
|
