| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: their melancholy voices. All the folk of the north isles are great
artificers of knitting: the Fair-Islanders alone dye their fabrics
in the Spanish manner. To this day, gloves and nightcaps,
innocently decorated, may be seen for sale in the Shetland
warehouse at Edinburgh, or on the Fair Isle itself in the
catechist's house; and to this day, they tell the story of the Duke
of Medina Sidonia's adventure.
It would seem as if the Fair Isle had some attraction for "persons
of quality." When I landed there myself, an elderly gentleman,
unshaved, poorly attired, his shoulders wrapped in a plaid, was
seen walking to and fro, with a book in his hand, upon the beach.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: had never worked, even if she had been reduced to live by her wits.
She was a wonderful old woman. She made me dumb. She held me
fascinated by the well-bred attitude, something sublimely aloof in
her air of wisdom.
I just simply let myself go admiring her as though I had been a
mere slave of aesthetics: the perfect grace, the amazing poise of
that venerable head, the assured as if royal - yes, royal even flow
of the voice. . . . But what was it she was talking about now?
These were no longer considerations about fatal women. She was
talking about her son again. My interest turned into mere
bitterness of contemptuous attention. For I couldn't withhold it
The Arrow of Gold |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: not able to do till three days after, which I spent in cutting
down with my knife some of the largest trees in the royal park,
about a hundred yards distant from the city. Of these trees I
made two stools, each about three feet high, and strong enough to
bear my weight. The people having received notice a second time,
I went again through the city to the palace with my two stools in
my hands. When I came to the side of the outer court, I stood
upon one stool, and took the other in my hand; this I lifted over
the roof, and gently set it down on the space between the first
and second court, which was eight feet wide. I then stept over
the building very conveniently from one stool to the other, and
Gulliver's Travels |
