| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: here to be set down. "What do you do here with this Yankee
supercargo, not fit for a gentlewoman to wipe her feet upon? Get
to your cabin, you hussy" (only it was something worse he called
her this time), "before I lay this cane across your shoulders!"
What with the whirling of Barnaby's brains and the passion into
which he was already melted, what with his despair and his love,
and his anger at this address, a man gone mad could scarcely be
less accountable for his actions than was he at that moment.
Hardly knowing what he did, he put his hand against Sir John
Malyoe's breast and thrust him violently back, crying out upon
him in a great, loud, hoarse voice for threatening a young lady,
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: About the blazing feast-house clustered the eyes of the foe,
Watching, hand upon weapon, lest ever a soul should flee,
Shading the brow from the glare, straining the neck to see
Only, to leeward, the flames in the wind swept far and wide,
And the forest sputtered on fire; and there might no man abide.
Thither Rahero crept, and dropped from the burning eaves,
And crouching low to the ground, in a treble covert of leaves
And fire and volleying smoke, ran for the life of his soul
Unseen; and behind him under a furnace of ardent coal,
Cairned with a wonder of flame, and blotting the night with smoke,
Blazed and were smelted together the bones of all his folk.
Ballads |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon: acknowledge debts of gratitude to myself? And what of this, that
during the siege,[35] while others were pitying themselves[36] I lived
in no greater straits than when the city was at the height of her
prosperity? and of this, that while others provide themselves with
delicacies[37] of the market at great cost, mine are the dainties of
the soul more sweet than theirs,[38] procured without expense? If in
all I have said about myself no one can convict me of lying, is it not
obvious that the praise I get from gods and men is justly earned? And
yet in spite of all, Meletus, you will have it that by such habits I
corrupt the young. We know, I fancy, what such corrupting influences
are; and perhaps you will tell us if you know of any one who, under my
The Apology |
