| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: to the stable-yard, where he called for his horse. He rode out of
Bridgwater ten minutes later, and took the road to Taunton as the moon
was rising big and yellow over the hills on his left. He reached
Taunton towards ten o'clock that night, having ridden hell-to-leather.
His first visit was to the Hare and Hounds, where Blake and Westmacott
had overtaken the courier. His next to the house where Sir Edward
Phelips and Colonel Luttrell - the gentlemen lately ordered to Taunton
by His Majesty - had their lodging.
The fruits of Mr. Trenchard's extraordinary behaviour that night were
to be seen at an early hour on the following day, when a constable and
three tything-men came with a Lord-Lieutenant's warrant to arrest Mr.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: of men, of whom the majority are really respectable, kind-hearted,
and useful; and if in giving one's deliberate opinion one seems to
blame them, let it be recollected that the blame lies not so much
on them as on their teachers: on those who, for some reasons best
known to themselves, have truckled to, and even justified, the
self-satisfied ignorance of a comfortable moneyed class.
But let it be said, and said boldly, that these men's conduct in
the matter of Sanitary Reform seems at least to show that they
value virtue, not for itself, but for its future rewards. To the
great majority of these men (with some heroic exceptions, whose
names may be written in no subscription list, but are surely
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: leaned back against the class-master's desk, steadying the table with
his feet on the cross-bar below, and said:
"Now, ten of you try to move it!"
I was present, and can vouch for this strange display of strength; it
was impossible to move the table.
Lambert had the gift of summoning to his aid at certain times the most
extraordinary powers, and of concentrating all his forces on a given
point. But children, like men, are wont to judge of everything by
first impressions, and after the first few days we ceased to study
Louis; he entirely belied Madame de Stael's prognostications, and
displayed none of the prodigies we looked for in him.
Louis Lambert |
