| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: Small blame to them if they keep ledgers: 'tis an
excellent business habit. Churchgoing is not, that ever
I heard, a subject of reproach; decency of linen is a
mark of prosperous affairs, and conscious moral rectitude
one of the tokens of good living. It is not their fault
it the city calls for something more specious by way of
inhabitants. A man in a frock-coat looks out of place
upon an Alp or Pyramid, although he has the virtues of a
Peabody and the talents of a Bentham. And let them
console themselves - they do as well as anybody else; the
population of (let us say) Chicago would cut quite as
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: are what you always were!"
She paused--no one spoke.
"I think, Elinor," she presently added, "we must
employ Edward to take care of us in our return to Barton.
In a week or two, I suppose, we shall be going; and, I trust,
Edward will not be very unwilling to accept the charge."
Poor Edward muttered something, but what it was,
nobody knew, not even himself. But Marianne, who saw
his agitation, and could easily trace it to whatever
cause best pleased herself, was perfectly satisfied,
and soon talked of something else.
Sense and Sensibility |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: kinsman for thirty years.
Thus far the Judge's countenance had expressed mild forbearance,
--grave and almost gentle deprecation of his cousin's unbecoming
violence,--free and Christian-like forgiveness of the wrong inflicted
by her words. But when those words were irrevocably spoken, his look
assumed sternness, the sense of power, and immitigable resolve; and
this with so natural and imperceptible a change, that it seemed as
if the iron man had stood there from the first, and the meek man not
at all. The effect was as when the light, vapory clouds, with their
soft coloring, suddenly vanish from the stony brow of a precipitous
mountain, and leave there the frown which you at once feel to be
House of Seven Gables |
