| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: everything is at an end between Miss Thorpe and me.
I left her and Bath yesterday, never to see either
again. I shall not enter into particulars--they
would only pain you more. You will soon hear enough
from another quarter to know where lies the blame;
and I hope will acquit your brother of everything
but the folly of too easily thinking his affection
returned. Thank God! I am undeceived in time! But
it is a heavy blow! After my father's consent had
been so kindly given--but no more of this. She has
made me miserable forever! Let me soon hear from
Northanger Abbey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: death, the certainty is more effectual than the severity. And I
will add that even a small uncertainty takes away from a pain
which we fear, much of its repelling force, whereas even a great
uncertainty does not destroy the attraction of a pleasure which we
are hoping for.
Here, then, we have a primary and potent cause of the slight
efficacy of legal punishments, in the picturing of the many
chances of escape. First there is the chance of not being
detected, which is the most powerful spring of all contemplated
crime: then the chance, in case of detection, that the evidence
will not be strong enough, that the judges will be merciful, or
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: officially or unofficially informed by Wilson that Sewall was on
the way, whether the statement had been made to himself or to Weber
in answer to a question, and whether he had heard Wilson's answer
or only Weber's question: all otiose; if he heard the question, he
was bound to have waited for the answer; if he heard it not, he
should have put it himself; and it was the manifest truth that he
rejoiced in his occasion. "Sir," he wrote to Sewall, "I have the
honour to inform you that, to my regret, I am obliged to consider
the municipal government to be provisionally in abeyance since you
have withdrawn your consent to the continuation of Mr. Martin in
his position as magistrate, and since you have refused to take part
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