| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: [to Third Soldier]
Are you the officer on guard?
FIRST SOLDIER
[coming forward]
I am, madam.
DUCHESS
I must see the prisoner alone.
FIRST SOLDIER
I am afraid that is impossible. [The DUCHESS hands him a ring, he
looks at and returns it to her with a bow and makes a sign to the
Soldiers.] Stand without there. [Exeunt the Soldiers.]
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemen be recognised, as the people
of the middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by the
nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant,
when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; taking
abundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true,
seldom in the open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale's
flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady
rustles her dress in a warm parlor. What then shall I liken the
Sperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not
be to that famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent with
myrrh, which was led out of an Indian town to do honour to Alexander
Moby Dick |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: and employments who thus died, as I call it, in the way of their duty;
but it was impossible for a private man to come at a certainty in the
particulars. I only remember that there died sixteen clergymen, two
aldermen, five physicians, thirteen surgeons, within the city and
liberties before the beginning of September. But this being, as I said
before, the great crisis and extremity of the infection, it can be no
complete list. As to inferior people, I think there died six-and-forty
constables and head-boroughs in the two parishes of Stepney and
Whitechappel; but I could not carry my list oil, for when the violent
rage of the distemper in September came upon us, it drove us out of
all measures. Men did then no more (lie by tale and by number. They
A Journal of the Plague Year |
