| 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: Mende. A year or two hence and this may be another world. The
desert is beleaguered. Now may some Languedocian Wordsworth turn
the sonnet into PATOIS: 'Mountains and vales and floods, heard YE
that whistle?'
At a place called La Bastide I was directed to leave the river, and
follow a road that mounted on the left among the hills of Vivarais,
the modern Ardeche; for I was now come within a little way of my
strange destination, the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of the
Snows. The sun came out as I left the shelter of a pine-wood, and
I beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. High rocky
hills, as blue as sapphire, closed the view, and between these lay
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: "Feel that?" said Moran, holding up a hand.
A fine, quivering tremble was thrilling through every beam of the
schooner, vibrating each rope like a harp-string. It passed away;
but before either Wilbur or Moran could comment upon it
recommenced, this time much more perceptibly. Charlie dashed aft,
his queue flying.
"W'at makum heap shake?" he shouted; "w'at for him shake? No
savvy, no likee, pretty much heap flaid; aie-yah, aie-yah!"
Slowly the schooner heaved up as though upon the crest of some
huge wave, slowly it settled, and again gradually lifted till
Wilbur had to catch at the rail to steady his footing. The
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: which has never yet been stained with ignominy."
"No, no," said the sheriff; "I have had enough of setting odds against you.
I have sworn you shall be hanged, and hanged you shall be."
"Then God have mercy on me," said young Gamwell; "and now, holy friar,
shrive my sinful soul."
The friar approached.
"Let me see this friar," said the sheriff: "if he be the friar
of the bridge, I had as lief have the devil in Nottingham;
but he shall find me too much for him here."
"The friar of the bridge," said Little John, "as you very
well know, sheriff, was father Michael of Rubygill Abbey,
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