| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: a very wet summer, and everything went wrong in the country round.
The hay had hardly been got in when the haystacks were floated
bodily down to the sea by an inundation; the vines were cut to
pieces with the hail; the corn was all killed by a black blight.
Only in the Treasure Valley, as usual, all was safe. As it had
rain when there was rain nowhere else, so it had sun when there
was sun nowhere else. Everybody came to buy corn at the farm and
went away pouring maledictions on the Black Brothers. They asked
what they liked and got it, except from the poor people, who could
only beg, and several of whom were starved at their very door
without the slightest regard or notice.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: kind of commodity will not bear exportation, and flesh being of
too tender a consistence, to admit a long continuance in salt,
although perhaps I could name a country, which would be glad to
eat up our whole nation without it.
After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion, as to
reject any offer, proposed by wise men, which shall be found
equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. But before
something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my
scheme, and offering a better, I desire the author or authors
will be pleased maturely to consider two points. First, As things
now stand, how they will be able to find food and raiment for a
A Modest Proposal |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: articulately and plain, that it was very pleasant to me; and he
lived with me no less than six-and-twenty years. How long he might
have lived afterwards I know not, though I know they have a notion
in the Brazils that they live a hundred years. My dog was a
pleasant and loving companion to me for no less than sixteen years
of my time, and then died of mere old age. As for my cats, they
multiplied, as I have observed, to that degree that I was obliged
to shoot several of them at first, to keep them from devouring me
and all I had; but at length, when the two old ones I brought with
me were gone, and after some time continually driving them from me,
and letting them have no provision with me, they all ran wild into
Robinson Crusoe |
