| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: tend.
I dropped into a gentlemen's sparring exhibition only last evening.
It did my heart good to see that there were a few young and
youngish youths left who could take care of their own heads in case
of emergency. It is a fine sight, that of a gentleman resolving
himself into the primitive constituents of his humanity. Here is a
delicate young man now, with an intellectual countenance, a slight
figure, a sub-pallid complexion, a most unassuming deportment, a
mild adolescent in fact, that any Hiram or Jonathan from between
the ploughtails would of course expect to handle with perfect ease.
Oh, he is taking off his gold-bowed spectacles! Ah, he is
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: nothing. The collector and the notary, who were both married men,
accused the Judge, who was a bachelor, of having started the
subject. He deprecated the charge, with a conscious, pleased air,
just like all the men I have ever seen, be they French or English.
How strange that we should all, in our unguarded moments, rather
like to be thought a bit of a rogue with the women!
As the evening went on, the wine grew more to my taste; the spirits
proved better than the wine; the company was genial. This was the
highest water mark of popular favour on the whole cruise. After
all, being in a Judge's house, was there not something semi-
official in the tribute? And so, remembering what a great country
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: Ivanovitch," said Platon. "Perhaps it will rid me of my melancholy."
"What has made you come to such a sudden decision?" asked the
perplexed Vassili (very nearly he added: "Fancy going travelling with
a man whose acquaintance you have just made, and who may turn out to
be a rascal or the devil knows what!" But, in spite of his distrust,
he contented himself with another covert scrutiny of Chichikov, and
this time came to the conclusion that there was no fault to be found
with his exterior).
The party turned to the right, and entered the gates of an ancient
courtyard attached to an old-fashioned house of a type no longer
built--the type which has huge gables supporting a high-pitched roof.
Dead Souls |
