| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: have been improper, but in some chaste circumlocution,
suitable for infant lips.
God bless him, indeed! For the term of his twilight
diligence is near at hand; and for not much longer shall we
watch him speeding up the street and, at measured intervals,
knocking another luminous hole into the dusk. The Greeks
would have made a noble myth of such an one; how he
distributed starlight, and, as soon as the need was over, re-
collected it; and the little bull's-eye, which was his
instrument, and held enough fire to kindle a whole parish,
would have been fitly commemorated in the legend. Now, like
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White: whether the anchor cable was holding; if the pack-horses had
straggled from the alpine meadows under the snows, this would
have been the occasion for intent listening for the faintly
tinkling hell so that next day one would know in which direction
to look. But since there existed for us no responsibility, we
each reported dutifully at the roll-call of habit, and dropped
back into our blankets with a grateful sigh.
I remember the moon sailing a good gait among apparently
stationary cloudlets; I recall a deep, black shadow lying before
distant silvery mountains; I glanced over the stark, motionless
canvases, each of which concealed a man; the air trembled with
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: the word bousingot formed the interim between the word jacobin,
which had become obsolete, and the word demagogue which has since
rendered such excellent service.
The sergeant gave orders to turn to the left, towards the watershed
of the Seine.
If it had occurred to them to separate into two squads, and to go
in both directions, Jean Valjean would have been captured.
All hung on that thread. It is probable that the instructions
of the prefecture, foreseeing a possibility of combat and
insurgents in force, had forbidden the patrol to part company.
The patrol resumed its march, leaving Jean Valjean behind it.
Les Miserables |
