| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: Thirteenth Chapter and the Appendix of the former edition
of this work.
On the Climate and Productions of Tierra del Fuego and
of the South-west Coast. -- The following table gives the
mean temperature of Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands,
and, for comparison, that of Dublin: --
Summer Winter Mean of Summer
Latitude Temp. Temp. and Winter
---------------------------------------------------------------
Tierra del Fuego 53 38' S. 50 33.08 41.54
Falkland Islands 51 38' S. 51 -- --
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: Knox and Mrs. Bowes and Mrs. Locke, James his servant,
Patrick his pupil, and a due following of children and maids.
He might be alone at work all morning in his study, for he
wrote much during these two years; but at night, you may be
sure there was a circle of admiring women, eager to hear the
new paragraph, and not sparing of applause. And what work,
among others, was he elaborating at this time, but the
notorious "First Blast"? So that he may have rolled out in
his big pulpit voice, how women were weak, frail, impatient,
feeble, foolish, inconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking the
spirit of counsel, and how men were above them, even as God
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: and it had grown magnificently under this second hand. Loose
liberal confident, it might have passed for a great gossiping
eloquent letter - the overflow into talk of an artist's amorous
plan. The theme I thought singularly rich, quite the strongest he
had yet treated; and this familiar statement of it, full too of
fine maturities, was really, in summarised splendour, a mine of
gold, a precious independent work. I remember rather profanely
wondering whether the ultimate production could possibly keep at
the pitch. His reading of the fond epistle, at any rate, made me
feel as if I were, for the advantage of posterity, in close
correspondence with him - were the distinguished person to whom it
|
