| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: lanterns and religious statuettes, its array of chests and pair of
ticking clocks, was the very model of what a kitchen ought to be; a
melodrama kitchen, suitable for bandits or noblemen in disguise.
Nor was the scene disgraced by the landlady, a handsome, silent,
dark old woman, clothed and hooded in black like a nun. Even the
public bedroom had a character of its own, with the long deal
tables and benches, where fifty might have dined, set out as for a
harvest-home, and the three box-beds along the wall. In one of
these, lying on straw and covered with a pair of table-napkins, did
I do penance all night long in goose-flesh and chattering teeth,
and sigh, from time to time as I awakened, for my sheepskin sack
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: friends with fallen ministers and made himself their intermediary with
their successors, diffusing thus the perfume of the last flattery and
the first compliment. He well understood how to arrange all the little
matters which a statesman has no leisure to attend to. He saw
necessities as they arose; he obeyed well; he could gloss a base act
with a jest and get the whole value of it; and he chose for the
services he thus rendered those that the recipients were not likely to
forget.
Thus, when it was necessary to cross the ditch between the Empire and
the Restoration, at a time when every one was looking about for
planks, and the curs of the Empire were howling their devotion right
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Enchanted Island of Yew by L. Frank Baum: behind you."
Nerle smiled at this; but whether from pride at being called a man or in
pleasurable anticipation of the sufferings to come I leave you to guess.
"Will you allow me to object to being killed?" asked the prince.
"Certainly," answered the king, courteously. "I expect you to object.
It is natural. But it will do you no good."
Then Terribus turned to an attendant and commanded:
"Send hither the Fool-Killer."
At this Prince Marvel laughed outright.
"The Fool-Killer!" he cried; "surely your Majesty does me little
credit. Am I, then, a fool?"
The Enchanted Island of Yew |
