| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: interpreter. To complete the picture, the same word signifies the
watching of a virgin and the warding of a chief; and the same word
means to cherish a chief and to fondle a favourite child.
Men like us, full of memories of feudalism, hear of a man so
addressed, so flattered, and we leap at once to the conclusion that
he is hereditary and absolute. Hereditary he is; born of a great
family, he must always be a man of mark; but yet his office is
elective and (in a weak sense) is held on good behaviour. Compare
the case of a Highland chief: born one of the great ones of his
clan, he was sometimes appointed its chief officer and conventional
father; was loved, and respected, and served, and fed, and died for
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: three weeks no one came to see me."
"It is true I am nothing to you," I went on, "but if you will let
me, I will look after you like a brother, I will never leave your
side, and I will cure you. Then, when you are strong again, you
can go back to the life you are leading, if you choose; but I am
sure you will come to prefer a quiet life, which will make you
happier and keep your beauty unspoiled."
"You think like that to-night because the wine has made you sad,
but you would never have the patience that you pretend to."
"Permit me to say, Marguerite, that you were ill for two months,
and that for two months I came to ask after you every day."
Camille |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: bathed in, and the rubbish that he wrote, I would exchange estates
to-day with the poor exile, and count myself a gainer.
But there was another point of similarity between the two journeys,
for which the Arethusa was to pay dear: both were gone upon in
days of incomplete security. It was not long after the Franco-
Prussian war. Swiftly as men forget, that country-side was still
alive with tales of uhlans, and outlying sentries, and hairbreadth
'scapes from the ignominious cord, and pleasant momentary
friendships between invader and invaded. A year, at the most two
years later, you might have tramped all that country over and not
heard one anecdote. And a year or two later, you would - if you
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