| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: for a good home in a comfortable farmhouse for a girl of twelve,
and this advertisement was answered by Mr. R., a well-to-do
farmer in the above-mentioned village. His references proving
satisfactory, the gentleman sent his adopted daughter to Mr.
R., with a letter, in which he stipulated that the girl should
have a room to herself, and stated that her guardians need be
at no trouble in the matter of education, as she was already
sufficiently educated for the position in life which she would
occupy. In fact, Mr. R. was given to understand that the girl
be allowed to find her own occupations and to spend her time
almost as she liked. Mr. R. duly met her at the nearest
The Great God Pan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: the instant, and many a doleful vignette of the grim wintry
streets at home returns to him, and begins to haunt his
memory. The hopeless, huddled attitude of tramps in doorways;
the flinching gait of barefoot children on the icy pavement;
the sheen of the rainy streets towards afternoon; the
meagreanatomy of the poor defined by the clinging of wet
garments; the high canorous note of the North-easter on days
when the very houses seem to stiffen with cold: these, and
such as these, crowd back upon him, and mockingly substitute
themselves for the fanciful winter scenes with which he had
pleased himself a while before. He cannot be glad enough that
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: monarchy and those proclaimed by the Assembly.
Feeling himself completely powerless, the king thought only of
flight. Arrested at Varennes and brought back a prisoner to
Paris, he was shut up in the Tuileries. The Assembly, although
still extremely royalist, suspended him from power, and decided
to assume the sole charge of the government.
Never did sovereign find himself in a position so difficult as
that of Louis at the time of his flight. The genius of a
Richelieu would hardly have extricated him. The only element of
defence on which he could have relied had from the beginning
absolutely failed him.
|
