| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: and disappear. The wild swan in question was now an apothecary in
Brazil. He had flown by way of Bordeaux, and first landed in
America, bareheaded and barefoot, and with a single halfpenny in his
pocket. And now he was an apothecary! Such a wonderful thing is an
adventurous life! I thought he might as well have stayed at home;
but you never can tell wherein a man's life consists, nor in what he
sets his pleasure: one to drink, another to marry, a third to write
scurrilous articles and be repeatedly caned in public, and now this
fourth, perhaps, to be an apothecary in Brazil. As for his old
father, he could conceive no reason for the lad's behaviour. 'I had
always bread for him,' he said; 'he ran away to annoy me. He loved
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: West, and I never noticed but what education was less of a drawback to
'em than you would think. Why, once over on Snake River, when Andrew
McWilliams' saddle horse got the botts, he sent a buckboard ten miles
for one of these strangers that claimed to be a botanist. But that
horse died.
One morning Idaho was poking around with a stick on top of a little
shelf that was too high to reach. Two books fell down to the floor. I
started toward 'em, but caught Idaho's eye. He speaks for the first
time in a week.
"Don't burn your fingers," says he. "In spite of the fact that you're
only fit to be the companion of a sleeping mud-turtle, I'll give you a
Heart of the West |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death by Patrick Henry: we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have
implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and
Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced
additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded;
and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne!
In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and
reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free--
if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which
we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble
struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged
ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest
|
