| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: neighbourhood, I suppose - big, burly fellows in great-coats and
top-boots, mightily flushed with liquor when they arrived, and,
before they left, inimitably drunk. They stayed long in the
kitchen with Burchell, drinking, shouting, singing, and keeping it
up; and the sound of their merry minstrelsy kept me a kind of
company. The night fell, and the shine of the fire brightened and
blinked on the panelled wall. Our illuminated windows must have
been visible not only from the back lane of which Fenn had spoken,
but from the court where the farmers' gig awaited them. In the far
end of the firelit room lay my companions, the one silent, the
other clamorously noisy, the images of death and drunkenness.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: to listen intently to a very gentle tapping sound, the nature
and source of which they all perfectly knew, and not one frowned;
but a man who joined us, and who could not conceive what we were
all doing in profound silence, when asked to listen, frowned much,
though not in an ill-temper, and said he could not in the least
understand what we all wanted. Dr. Piderit[3] who has published
remarks to the same effect, adds that stammerers generally
frown in speaking, and that a man in doing even so trifling
a thing as pulling on a boot, frowns if he finds it too tight.
Some persons are such habitual frowners, that the mere effort
of speaking almost always causes their brows to contract.
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: which could only be occasioned by some strange personal
deformity. The young sportsman hailed this extraordinary
appearance twice, without receiving any answer, or attending to
the pinches by which his companion endeavoured to intimate that
their best course was to walk on, without giving farther
disturbance to a being of such singular and preternatural
exterior. To the third repeated demand of "Who are you? What do
you here at this hour of night?"--a voice replied, whose shrill,
uncouth, and dissonant tones made Elliot step two paces back, and
startled even his companion, "Pass on your way, and ask nought at
them that ask nought at you."
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