| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: there, where the rocks made room. The air was very sweet; one
could not help wishing to be a citizen of such a complete and tiny
continent and home of fisherfolk.
The house was broad and clean, with a roof that looked heavy
on its low walls. It was one of the houses that seem firm-rooted
in the ground, as if they were two-thirds below the surface, like
icebergs. The front door stood hospitably open in expectation of
company, and an orderly vine grew at each side; but our path led to
the kitchen door at the house-end, and there grew a mass of gay
flowers and greenery, as if they had been swept together by some
diligent garden broom into a tangled heap: there were portulacas
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: "Tell us, Monsieur Bianchon!" was the cry on every side.
The obliging doctor bowed, and silence reigned.
"At about a hundred paces from Vendome, on the banks of the Loir,"
said he, "stands an old brown house, crowned with very high roofs, and
so completely isolated that there is nothing near it, not even a fetid
tannery or a squalid tavern, such as are commonly seen outside small
towns. In front of this house is a garden down to the river, where the
box shrubs, formerly clipped close to edge the walks, now straggle at
their own will. A few willows, rooted in the stream, have grown up
quickly like an enclosing fence, and half hide the house. The wild
plants we call weeds have clothed the bank with their beautiful
La Grande Breteche |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: this number shall be reared, and provided for? which, as I have
already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly
impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can
neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither
build houses, (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they
can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing till they arrive
at six years old; except where they are of towardly parts,
although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier; during
which time they can however be properly looked upon only as
probationers: As I have been informed by a principal gentleman in
the county of Cavan, who protested to me, that he never knew
A Modest Proposal |
