| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: upon the palm of her hand, - with the slow short-measur'd step of
thoughtfulness, - and with her eyes, as she went step by step,
fixed upon the ground, it struck me she was trying the same cause
herself. - God help her! said I, she has some mother-in-law, or
tartufish aunt, or nonsensical old woman, to consult upon the
occasion, as well as myself: so not caring to interrupt the
process, and deeming it more gallant to take her at discretion than
by surprise, I faced about and took a short turn or two before the
door of the Remise, whilst she walk'd musing on one side.
IN THE STREET. CALAIS.
HAVING, on the first sight of the lady, settled the affair in my
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: That's where the mistake is." He sat awhile and shook, blinking
in his plate: "He was all the brother that ever I had," he added,
but with no heart in his voice; and then he caught up his spoon
and fell to supper again, but still shaking.
Now this last passage, this laying of hands upon my person and
sudden profession of love for my dead father, went so clean
beyond my comprehension that it put me into both fear and hope.
On the one hand, I began to think my uncle was perhaps insane and
might be dangerous; on the other, there came up into my mind
(quite unbidden by me and even discouraged) a story like some
ballad I had heard folk singing, of a poor lad that was a
Kidnapped |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: sensational, the romantic, even the dramatic. They know the
terrible uses to which appeals to the fancy and the emotions have
been applied, and are still applied to enslave the intellects, the
consciences, the very bodies of men and women. They dread so much
from experience the abuse of that formula, that "a thing is so
beautiful it must be true," that they are inclined to reply:
"Rather let us say boldly, it is so beautiful that it cannot be
true. Let us mistrust, or even refuse to believe e priori, and at
first sight, all startling, sensational, even poetic tales, and
accept nothing as history, which is not as dull as the ledger of a
dry-goods' store." But I think that experience, both in nature and
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