| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: dead, or my father, in maintaining that the dog could not fail to
find a bird that had been killed.
And this must needs happen just when they were both so anxious
to avoid every sort of misunderstanding! That was the very reason
why they had carefully fought shy of all serious conversation, and
spent all their time merely amusing themselves.
When my father said good night to us that night, he whispered
to us that we were to get up early and go back to the place to have
a good hunt for the bird.
And what was the result? The woodcock, in falling, had caught
in the fork of a branch, right at the top of an aspen-tree, and it
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Richard III by William Shakespeare: To take our brother Clarence to your grace.
GLOUCESTER. Why, madam, have I off'red love for this,
To be so flouted in this royal presence?
Who knows not that the gentle Duke is dead?
[They all start]
You do him injury to scorn his corse.
KING EDWARD. Who knows not he is dead! Who knows
he is?
QUEEN ELIZABETH. All-seeing heaven, what a world is this!
BUCKINGHAM. Look I so pale, Lord Dorset, as the rest?
DORSET. Ay, my good lord; and no man in the presence
Richard III |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: larger scale, and must never disappoint the ear by the trot
of an accepted metre. And this obligation is the third
orange with which he has to juggle, the third quality which
the prose writer must work into his pattern of words. It may
be thought perhaps that this is a quality of ease rather than
a fresh difficulty; but such is the inherently rhythmical
strain of the English language, that the bad writer - and
must I take for example that admired friend of my boyhood,
Captain Reid? - the inexperienced writer, as Dickens in his
earlier attempts to be impressive, and the jaded writer, as
any one may see for himself, all tend to fall at once into
|
