| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: of your colleagues look back on the inertia of your Church, and the
intrusive and decisive heroism of Damien, with something almost to
be called remorse. I am sure it is so with yourself; I am
persuaded your letter was inspired by a certain envy, not
essentially ignoble, and the one human trait to be espied in that
performance. You were thinking of the lost chance, the past day;
of that which should have been conceived and was not; of the
service due and not rendered. TIME WAS, said the voice in your
ear, in your pleasant room, as you sat raging and writing; and if
the words written were base beyond parallel, the rage, I am happy
to repeat - it is the only compliment I shall pay you - the rage
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Cruise of the Jasper B. by Don Marquis: breathing night, he saw a succession of pictures. . . .
Stripped to a pair of cotton trousers, with a dripping cutlass in
one hand and a Colt's revolver in the other, an adventurer at the
head of a bunch of dogs as desperate as himself fought his way
across the reeking decks of a Chinese junk, to close in single
combat with a gigantic one-eyed pirate who stood by the helm with
a ring of dead men about him and a great two-handed sword
upheaved. . . . This adventurer was--Clement J. Cleggett! . . .
Through the phosphorescent waters of a summer sea, reckless of
cruising sharks, a sailor's clasp knife in his teeth, glided
noiselessly a strong swimmer; he reached the side of a schooner
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: fancy which had been leading her to the extreme of languid
indolence and selfish repining, now at work in introducing
excess into a scheme of such rational employment and virtuous
self-control. Her smile however changed to a sigh when she
remembered that promise to Willoughby was yet unfulfilled,
and feared she had that to communicate which might again
unsettle the mind of Marianne, and ruin at least for a time
this fair prospect of busy tranquillity. Willing therefore
to delay the evil hour, she resolved to wait till her
sister's health were more secure, before she appointed it.
But the resolution was made only to be broken.
Sense and Sensibility |
