| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: must be chilled through, good soul. Why are you women dawdling
so with the samovar?'
'It is ready,' said one of the young women, and after flicking
with her apron the top of the samovar which was now boiling
over, she carried it with an effort to the table, raised it,
and set it down with a thud.
Meanwhile Vasili Andreevich was telling how he had lost his
way, how they had come back twice to this same village, and how
they had gone astray and had met some drunken peasants. Their
hosts were surprised, explained where and why they had missed
their way, said who the tipsy people they had met were, and
Master and Man |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: ammunition on their heads. A nigger man met them twenty miles off, and he
said they were skooting up for Lo Magundi's country as fast as they could
go.
"And do you know," said Peter, striking his knee, and looking impressively
across the fire at the stranger; "what I'm as sure of as that I'm sitting
here? It's that that nigger I caught at my hut, that day, was her nigger
husband! He'd come to fetch her that time; and when she saw she couldn't
get away without our catching her, she got the cartridges for him!" Peter
paused impressively between the words. "And now she's gone back to him.
It's for him she's taken that ammunition!"
Peter looked across the fire at the stranger, to see what impression his
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: repair them; indeed, the chance to do so is never given. This
necessity of being perfect and on her guard at every moment, must
surely chill her faculties and numb their exercise? Such a woman can
exist only in an atmosphere of angelic forbearance. Where are the
hearts from which forbearance comes with no alloy of bitter and
stinging pity.
These thoughts, to which the codes of social life had accustomed her,
and the sort of consideration more wounding than insult shown to her
by the world,--a consideration which increases a misfortune by making
it apparent,--oppressed Mademoiselle de Temninck with a constant sense
of embarrassment, which drove back into her soul its happiest
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