| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: again - or no, be what I am still, only there instead of here, for
just a little. Did you see that I had written about John Todd? In
this month's LONGMAN it was; if you have not seen it, I will try
and send it you. Some day climb as high as Halkerside for me (I am
never likely to do it for myself), and sprinkle some of the well
water on the turf. I am afraid it is a pagan rite, but quite
harmless, and YE CAN SAIN IT WI' A BIT PRAYER. Tell the Peewies
that I mind their forbears well. My heart is sometimes heavy, and
sometimes glad to mind it all. But for what we have received, the
Lord make us truly thankful. Don't forget to sprinkle the water,
and do it in my name; I feel a childish eagerness in this.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: the emperor for a criminal who had wronged his master of a great
sum of money, which he had received by order and ran away with;
and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation, that it
was only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in
me to offer as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime;
and truly I had little to say in return, farther than the common
answer, that different nations had different customs; for, I
confess, I was heartily ashamed. (2)
Although we usually call reward and punishment the two hinges
upon which all government turns, yet I could never observe this
maxim to be put in practice by any nation except that of
Gulliver's Travels |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: stronger; a statement shockingly untrue on the
face of it.
That afternoon I took my watch as a matter of
course. A great over-heated stillness enveloped
the ship and seemed to hold her motionless in a
flaming ambience composed in two shades of blue.
Faint, hot puffs eddied nervelessly from her sails.
And yet she moved. She must have. For, as the
sun was setting, we had drawn abreast of Cape
Liant and dropped it behind us: an ominous re-
treating shadow in the last gleams of twilight.
The Shadow Line |
