| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: speech and reason. Birds--the most wonderful of all animals in
the eyes of a man of science or a poet--are sometimes looked on as
wiser, and nearer to the gods, than man. The Norseman--the
noblest and ablest human being, save the Greek, of whom history
can tell us--was not ashamed to say of the bear of his native
forests that he had "ten men's strength and eleven men's wisdom."
How could Reinecke Fuchs have gained immortality, in the Middle
Ages and since, save by the truth of its too solid and humiliating
theorem--that the actions of the world of men were, on the whole,
guided by passions but too exactly like those of the lower
animals? I have said, and say again, with good old Vaughan:
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: to be your own hound, and a precious bad hound I was,
following every false scent on the whole course to the bitter
end; but I came in 3rd at the last on my little Jack, who
stuck to it gallantly, and awoke the praises of some
discriminating persons. (5 + 7 + 2.5 = 14.5 miles; yes, that
is the count.) We had quite the old sensations of
exhilaration, discovery, an appeal to a savage instinct; and
I felt myself about 17 again, a pleasant experience.
However, it was on the Sabbath Day, and I am now a pariah
among the English, as if I needed any increment of
unpopularity. I must not go again; it gives so much
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: distance:
"Drop it!"
"I sail before sunrise," he shouted in answer, and went on board.
When he came up from his cabin after an uneasy night, it was dark
yet. A lank figure strolled across the deck.
"Here I am," said Jorgenson, huskily. "Die there or here--all
one. But, if I die there, remember the girl must eat."
Lingard was one of the few who had seen Jorgenson's girl. She had
a wrinkled brown face, a lot of tangled grey hair, a few black
stumps of teeth, and had been married to him lately by an
enterprising young missionary from Bukit Timah. What her
The Rescue |
