| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: is, that may well be called frighted to death. But besides those who
were so frighted as to die upon the spot, there
were great numbers frighted to other extremes, some frighted out of
their senses, some out of their memory, and some out of their
understanding. But I return to the shutting up of houses.
As several people, I say, got out of their houses by stratagem after
they were shut UP, so others got out by bribing the watchmen, and
giving them money to let them go privately out in the night. I must
confess I thought it at that time the most innocent corruption or
bribery that any man could be guilty of, and therefore could not but
pity the poor men, and think it was hard when three of those
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: Three leagues farther and David was weary. He rested and slept for a
while on a bed of pine boughs at the roadside. Then up and on again
along the unknown way.
Thus for five days he travelled the great road, sleeping upon Nature's
balsamic beds or in peasants' ricks, eating of their black, hospitable
bread, drinking from streams or the willing cup of the goatherd.
At length he crossed a great bridge and set his foot within the
smiling city that has crushed or crowned more poets than all the rest
of the world. His breath came quickly as Paris sang to him in a little
undertone her vital chant of greeting--the hum of voice and foot and
wheel.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: pass altogether as my own act and deed, wherein there was so much
of both.
- But, be this as it may, - the moment I cast my eyes upon him, I
was predetermined not to give him a single sous; and, accordingly,
I put my purse into my pocket - buttoned it - set myself a little
more upon my centre, and advanced up gravely to him; there was
something, I fear, forbidding in my look: I have his figure this
moment before my eyes, and think there was that in it which
deserved better.
The monk, as I judged by the break in his tonsure, a few scattered
white hairs upon his temples, being all that remained of it, might
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