| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: this smooth, break-neck gallop, when we came upon a hamlet and
asked where we were, we had got no farther than four kilometres
(say two miles and a half) from Origny. If it were not for the
honour of the thing (in the Scots saying), we might almost as well
have been standing still.
We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of poplars. The
leaves danced and prattled in the wind all round about us. The
river hurried on meanwhile, and seemed to chide at our delay.
Little we cared. The river knew where it was going; not so we:
the less our hurry, where we found good quarters and a pleasant
theatre for a pipe. At that hour, stockbrokers were shouting in
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: Besides, was this mass of heavy mining plant worth
transportation? If it was, why had not the rightful owners
carted it away? If it was, would they not preserve their
title to these movables, even after they had lost their title
to the mine? And if it were not, what the better was Rufe?
Nothing would grow at Silverado; there was even no wood to
cut; beyond a sense of property, there was nothing to be
gained. Lastly, was it at all credible that Ronalds would
forget what Rufe remembered? The days of grace were not yet
over: any fine morning he might appear, paper in hand, and
enter for another year on his inheritance. However, it was
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: this absorption failed him, and, head bowed upon the table, he
visioned the lively all-night houses of Nome, where the
gamekeepers and lookouts worked in shifts and the clattering
roulette ball never slept. At such times his loneliness and
bankruptcy stunned him till he sat for hours in the same
unblinking, unchanging position. At other times, his long-pent
bitterness found voice in passionate outbursts; for he had rubbed
the world the wrong way and did not like the feel of it.
"Life's a skin-game," he was fond of repeating, and on this one
note he rang the changes. "I never had half a chance," he
complained. "I was faked in my birth and flim-flammed with my
|
