| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: taking a word out of one state of society, and applying it to
another, of which the writers know less than nothing, and no
European knows much. Several interpreters and several days were
employed last September in the fruitless attempt to convey to the
mind of Laupepa the sense of the word "resignation." What can a
Samoan gather from the words, ELECTION? ELECTION OF A KING?
ELECTION OF A KING ACCORDING TO THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF SAMOA?
What are the electoral measures, what is the method of canvassing,
likely to be employed by two, three, four, or five, more or less
absolute princelings, eager to evince each other? And who is to
distinguish such a process from the state of war? In such
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: What is, we know. We are together now, and it is unknown
how long we shall be so; the unknown always fills my mind
with terrible possibilities, even when I may reasonably
expect it to be cheerful....Clym, the eclipsed moonlight
shines upon your face with a strange foreign colour,
and shows its shape as if it were cut out in gold.
That means that you should be doing better things
than this."
"You are ambitious, Eustacia--no, not exactly ambitious,
luxurious. I ought to be of the same vein, to make
you happy, I suppose. And yet, far from that, I could
Return of the Native |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: and the ant-hills are at rest; and of all my many favourite
picnic spots this one on the Baltic is the loveliest and best.
As it is a three-hours' drive, the Man of Wrath is loud in his
lamentations when the special sort of weather comes which means,
as experience has taught him, this particular excursion.
There must be deep snow, hard frost, no wind, and a cloudless sky;
and when, on waking up, I see these conditions fulfilled,
then it would need some very potent reason to keep me from
having out a sleigh and going off. It is, I admit, a hard day
for the horses; but why have horses if they are not to take
you where you want to go to, and at the time you want to go?
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
