| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: chatting and laughing as young ladies do when they get together, if
they be but on tolerably intimate terms. But I, feeling myself to
be one too many, left them to their merriment and lagged behind, as
usual on such occasions: I had no relish for walking beside Miss
Green or Miss Susan like one deaf and dumb, who could neither speak
nor be spoken to.
But this time I was not long alone. It struck me, first, as very
odd, that just as I was thinking about Mr. Weston he should come up
and accost me; but afterwards, on due reflection, I thought there
was nothing odd about it, unless it were the fact of his speaking
to me; for on such a morning and so near his own abode, it was
Agnes Grey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: the practice at least is exactly as I have stated it, and is
obviously attractive to the individual who prefers adventure
on a full stomach to useful work on an empty. Setting aside
the theory with its latent quarrel between Free Trade and
State control, we can still recognize that each workman
engaged in these pursuits has become an unproductive
middleman, one of that very parasitic species which the
revolutionaries had hoped to make unnecessary. It is bad
from the revolutionary point of view if a workman is so
employed, but it is no less bad from the point of view of
people who do not care twopence about the revolution one
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: skeletons, until at last there were thirty of us. Then
no more came from the swamp, and Red-Eye was not among
us. It was noticeable that no children had survived the
frightful journey.
I shall not tell in detail of the years we lived by the
sea. It was not a happy abiding-place. The air was
raw and chill, and we suffered continually from
coughing and colds. We could not survive in such an
environment. True, we had children; but they had
little hold on life and died early, while we died
faster than new ones were born. Our number steadily
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