| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: affecting a sprightliness which sat on him most unhandsomely,
'and not a drop till then. Business first, and pleasure
afterward.'
With this promise the jarvey was prevailed upon to clamber to
his place and drive, with hideous deliberation, to the door
of the Lodge. There were no signs as yet of any public
emotion; only, two men stood not far off in talk, and their
presence, seen from afar, set John's pulses buzzing. He
might have spared himself his fright, for the pair were lost
in some dispute of a theological complexion, and with
lengthened upper lip and enumerating fingers, pursued the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: could the other boat. Then I measured the distance of ground, and
resolved to cut a dock or canal, to bring the water up to the
canoe, seeing I could not bring the canoe down to the water. Well,
I began this work; and when I began to enter upon it, and calculate
how deep it was to be dug, how broad, how the stuff was to be
thrown out, I found that, by the number of hands I had, being none
but my own, it must have been ten or twelve years before I could
have gone through with it; for the shore lay so high, that at the
upper end it must have been at least twenty feet deep; so at
length, though with great reluctancy, I gave this attempt over
also.
 Robinson Crusoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: pattered and whistled as the air gained entrance. The toilet,
too, with its mirror, turbaned after the manner of the beginning
of the century, with a coiffure of murrey-coloured silk, and its
hundred strange-shaped boxes, providing for arrangements which
had been obsolete for more than fifty years, had an antique, and
in so far a melancholy, aspect. But nothing could blaze more
brightly and cheerfully than the two large wax candles; or if
aught could rival them, it was the flaming, bickering fagots in
the chimney, that sent at once their gleam and their warmth
through the snug apartment, which, notwithstanding the general
antiquity of its appearance, was not wanting in the least
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