| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: Alas, there were her two forelegs no better than raw beef on the
inside, and blood was running from under her tail. They told me
when I started, and I was ready to believe it, that before a few
days I should come to love Modestine like a dog. Three days had
passed, we had shared some misadventures, and my heart was still as
cold as a potato towards my beast of burden. She was pretty enough
to look at; but then she had given proof of dead stupidity,
redeemed indeed by patience, but aggravated by flashes of sorry and
ill-judged light-heartedness. And I own this new discovery seemed
another point against her. What the devil was the good of a she-
ass if she could not carry a sleeping-bag and a few necessaries? I
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: inflammation of the nerves, for which leeches should be applied to the
neck, and opium to the head. As a result, the attacks are not so
frequent; they appear now only about once a year, and always late in
the autumn. When he recovers, Taillefer says repeatedly that he would
far rather die than endure such torture."
"Then he must suffer terribly!" said a broker, considered a wit, who
was present.
"Oh," continued the mistress of the house, "last year he nearly died
in one of these attacks. He had gone alone to his country-house on
pressing business. For want, perhaps, of immediate help, he lay
twenty-two hours stiff and stark as though he were dead. A very hot
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: modern--jejune--mere matters of day-before-yesterday.
The sense of the oldness of the Cathedral vanished away
under the influence of this truly venerable presence.
St. Mark's is monumental; it is an imperishable remembrancer
of the profound and simply piety of the Middle Ages.
Whoever could ravish a column from a pagan temple,
did it and contributed his swag to this Christian one.
So this fane is upheld by several hundred acquisitions
procured in that peculiar way. In our day it would be
immoral to go on the highway to get bricks for a church,
but it was no sin in the old times. St. Mark's was itself
|
