| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: to the south wall of that garden one day four and twenty great
spikes, which Peter Smith did forge for me and for which I pay
him fivepence, and that all the money that I had left of my
half-year's wage, and wot not where I may get more at these
present, withouten I do betake me to Sir James, who, as I did
tell ye, hath consented to hold those moneys that Prior Edward
gave me till I need them.
"Now these same spikes, I say, I take me them down behind the
corner of the wall, and there drave them betwixt the stones, my
very dear comrade and true friend Gascoyne holping me thereto to
do. And so come Saturday, I climb me over the wall and to the
Men of Iron |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: with a long neck; the glass of it was white like milk, with
changing rainbow colours in the grain. Withinsides something
obscurely moved, like a shadow and a fire.
"This is the bottle," said the man; and, when Keawe laughed, "You
do not believe me?" he added. "Try, then, for yourself. See if
you can break it."
So Keawe took the bottle up and dashed it on the floor till he was
weary; but it jumped on the floor like a child's ball, and was not
injured.
"This is a strange thing," said Keawe. "For by the touch of it, as
well as by the look, the bottle should be of glass."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: neatness.
The conjurer juggles with two oranges, and our pleasure in
beholding him springs from this, that neither is for an
instant overlooked or sacrificed. So with the writer. His
pattern, which is to please the supersensual ear, is yet
addressed, throughout and first of all, to the demands of
logic. Whatever be the obscurities, whatever the intricacies
of the argument, the neatness of the fabric must not suffer,
or the artist has been proved unequal to his design. And, on
the other hand, no form of words must be selected, no knot
must be tied among the phrases, unless knot and word be
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