| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: noiselessly; Knight softly glanced up: it was only the little
kitchen-maid. Knight thought reading prayers a bore.
He went out alone, and for almost the first time failed to
recognize that holding converse with Nature's charms was not
solitude. On nearing the house again he perceived his young
friend crossing a slope by a path which ran into the one he was
following in the angle of the field. Here they met. Elfride was
at once exultant and abashed: coming into his presence had upon
her the effect of entering a cathedral.
Knight had his note-book in his hand, and had, in fact, been in
the very act of writing therein when they came in view of each
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: The African hunter Cumming tells us that the skin of the eland,
as well as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the
most delicious perfume of trees and grass. I would have every man
so much like a wild antelope, so much a part and parcel of
nature, that his very person should thus sweetly advertise our
senses of his presence, and remind us of those parts of nature
which he most haunts. I feel no disposition to be satirical, when
the trapper's coat emits the odor of musquash even; it is a
sweeter scent to me than that which commonly exhales from the
merchant's or the scholar's garments. When I go into their
wardrobes and handle their vestments, I am reminded of no grassy
Walking |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: had barked and the folk run out from their houses; and he thought
he had heard a clatter of arms and seen a red-coat come to one of
the doors. On all accounts we lay the next day in the borders of
the wood and kept a close look-out, so that if it was John Breck
that came we might be ready to guide him, and if it was the
red-coats we should have time to get away.
About noon a man was to be spied, straggling up the open side of
the mountain in the sun, and looking round him as he came, from
under his hand. No sooner had Alan seen him than he whistled;
the man turned and came a little towards us: then Alan would give
another "peep!" and the man would come still nearer; and so by
Kidnapped |
