| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: lieutenant, with a son to subsist as well as himself out of his pay,--that
thou didst not make an offer to him of my purse; because, had he stood in
need, thou knowest, Trim, he had been as welcome to it as myself.--Your
honour knows, said the corporal, I had no orders;--True, quoth my uncle
Toby,--thou didst very right, Trim, as a soldier,--but certainly very wrong
as a man.
In the second place, for which, indeed, thou hast the same excuse,
continued my uncle Toby,--when thou offeredst him whatever was in my
house,--thou shouldst have offered him my house too:--A sick brother
officer should have the best quarters, Trim, and if we had him with us,--we
could tend and look to him:--Thou art an excellent nurse thyself, Trim,--
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: Aegyptus, the heaven-fed stream, and offered holy hecatombs
to the deathless gods who keep the wide heaven. So shall
the gods grant thee the path which thou desirest."
'So spake he, but my spirit within me was broken, for that
he bade me again to go to Aegyptus over the misty deep, a
long and grievous way.
'Yet even so I answered him saying: "Old man, all this will
I do, according to thy word. But come, declare me this, and
tell it all plainly. Did all those Achaeans return safe
with their ships, all whom Nestor and I left as we went
from Troy, or perished any by a shameful death aboard his
The Odyssey |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: I could not give any connected detail yesterday; but the suddenness,
and, in one light, the unseasonableness with which the affair burst out,
needs explanation; for though the event of the 26th ult., as you
will conclude, immediately opened to me the happiest prospects,
I should not have presumed on such early measures, but from the
very particular circumstances, which left me not an hour to lose.
I should myself have shrunk from any thing so hasty, and she would have
felt every scruple of mine with multiplied strength and refinement.--
But I had no choice. The hasty engagement she had entered into with
that woman--Here, my dear madam, I was obliged to leave off abruptly,
to recollect and compose myself.--I have been walking over the country,
Emma |
