| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: mind if he could have made out just how he stood
with his congregation. Unfortunately nothing in his
previous experiences helped him in the least to measure
or guess at the feelings of these curious Octavians.
Their Methodism seemed to be sound enough, and to stick
quite to the letter of the Discipline, so long as it was
expressed in formulae. It was its spirit which he felt
to be complicated by all sorts of conditions wholly novel to him.
The existence of a line of street-cars in the town,
for example, would not impress the casual thinker as
likely to prove a rock in the path of peaceful religion.
 The Damnation of Theron Ware |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: Jacobus, the companion, the gouvernante. While she remained
thunderstruck, I got up and made her a low bow.
The ladies of Jacobus's household evidently spent their days in
light attire. This stumpy old woman with a face like a large
wrinkled lemon, beady eyes, and a shock of iron-grey hair, was
dressed in a garment of some ash-coloured, silky, light stuff. It
fell from her thick neck down to her toes with the simplicity of an
unadorned nightgown. It made her appear truly cylindrical. She
exclaimed: "How did you get here?"
Before I could say a word she vanished and presently I heard a
confusion of shrill protestations in a distant part of the house.
 'Twixt Land & Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: severe as that of youth; if I (and the CASCO) are spared, I shall
tell you more exactly, as I am one of the few people in the world
who do not forget their own lives.
Good-bye, then, my dear fellow, and please write us a word; we
expect to have three mails in the next two months: Honolulu,
Tahiti, and Guayaquil. But letters will be forwarded from
Scribner's, if you hear nothing more definite directly. In 3
(three) days I leave for San Francisco. - Ever yours most
cordially,
R. L. S.
CHAPTER X - PACIFIC VOYAGES, JUNE 1888-NOVEMBER 1890
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