| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: In the opposite cell was lodged a loyalist tailor, who had been
ruined by giving credit to the cavaliers and their ladies,--(for at
this time, and much later, down to the reign of Anne, tailors were
employed by females even to make and fit on their stays),--who had
run mad with drink and loyalty on the burning of the Rump, and ever
since had made the cells of the madhouse echo with fragments of the
ill-fated Colonel Lovelace's song, scraps from Cowley's "Cutter of
Coleman street," and some curious specimens from Mrs. Aphra Behn's
plays, where the cavaliers are denominated the heroicks, and Lady
Lambert and Lady Desborough represented as going to meeting, their
large Bibles carried before them by their pages, and falling in
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: wisdom was constantly in a state of endurance mitigated by sarcasm.
Godfrey waited, before he spoke again, until the ale had been
brought and the door closed--an interval during which Fleet, the
deer-hound, had consumed enough bits of beef to make a poor man's
holiday dinner.
"There's been a cursed piece of ill-luck with Wildfire," he began;
"happened the day before yesterday."
"What! broke his knees?" said the Squire, after taking a draught
of ale. "I thought you knew how to ride better than that, sir.
I never threw a horse down in my life. If I had, I might ha'
whistled for another, for _my_ father wasn't quite so ready to
Silas Marner |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: were gathered together only because the carrion needed to be removed
from the face of God's earth. And at the time of which I now speak, the
signs of approaching death were fearfully apparent. Hapless and
hopeless enough were the clique of men out of whom the first two
Ptolemies hoped to form a school of philosophy; men certainly clever
enough, and amusing withal, who might give the kings of Egypt many a
shrewd lesson in king-craft, and the ways of this world, and the art of
profiting by the folly of fools, and the selfishness of the selfish; or
who might amuse them, in default of fighting-cocks, by puns and
repartees, and battles of logic; "how one thing cannot be predicated of
another," or "how the wise man is not only to overcome every misfortune,
|
