| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: When moving this way or that upon the purse which I have split from
top to bottom with my scissors, the Processionaries upholster the
breach even as they upholster the untouched part, without paying
more attention to it than to the rest of the wall. Caring nothing
about the accident, they behave in the same way as on a non-gutted
dwelling. The crevice is closed, in course of time, not
intentionally, but solely by the action of the usual spinning.
We arrive at the same conclusion on the subject of the House
Spider. Walking about her platform every night, she lays fresh
courses without drawing a distinction between the solid and the
hollow. She has not deliberately put a patch in the torn texture;
The Life of the Spider |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: less commercial; and we may think, without being sordid, that
when we purchase six huge and distressingly expensive
volumes, we are entitled to be treated rather more like
scholars and rather less like children. But Mr. Bright may
rest assured: while we complain, we are still grateful. Mr.
Wheatley, to divide our obligation, brings together, clearly
and with no lost words, a body of illustrative material.
Sometimes we might ask a little more; never, I think, less.
And as a matter of fact, a great part of Mr. Wheatley's
volume might be transferred, by a good editor of Pepys, to
the margin of the text, for it is precisely what the reader
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: one side, with her head drooping, as if wounded;
with her arms hanging passive by her side, as if
dead.
"You can't buy me in," he said, "and you can't
buy yourself out."
He set his hat firmly with a little tap, and next
moment she felt herself lifted up in the powerful
embrace of his arms. Her feet lost the ground;
her head hung back; he showered kisses on her face
with a silent and over-mastering ardour, as if in
haste to get at her very soul. He kissed her pale
To-morrow |
