| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: Four gangs at work on our place; a lively scene; axes
crashing and smoke blowing; all the knives are out. But I
rob the garden party of one without a stock, and you should
see my hand - cut to ribbons. Now I want to do my path up
the Vaituliga single-handed, and I want it to burst on the
public complete. Hence, with devilish ingenuity, I begin it
at different places; so that if you stumble on one section,
you may not even then suspect the fulness of my labours.
Accordingly, I started in a new place, below the wire, and
hoping to work up to it. It was perhaps lucky I had so bad a
cutlass, and my smarting hand bid me stay before I had got up
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: them for the occupation.
And so in this fifth book of my Parallel Lives, in giving an
account of Demosthenes and Cicero, my comparison of their
natural dispositions and their characters will be formed upon
their actions and their lives as statesmen, and I shall not
pretend to criticize their orations one against the other, to
show which of the two was the more charming or the more powerful
speaker. For there, as Ion says,
We are but like a fish upon dry land;
a proverb which Caecilius perhaps forgot, when he employed his
always adventurous talents in so ambitious an attempt as a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: threw back De Marsay with a hand like iron, and nailed him, so to
speak, to the bottom of the carriage; then with his free hand, he drew
a triangular dagger, and whistled. The coachman heard the whistle and
stopped. Henri was unarmed, he was forced to yield. He moved his head
towards the handkerchief. The gesture of submission calmed Cristemio,
and he bound his eyes with a respect and care which manifested a sort
of veneration for the person of the man whom his idol loved. But,
before taking this course, he had placed his dagger distrustfully in
his side pocket, and buttoned himself up to the chin.
"That nigger would have killed me!" said De Marsay to himself.
Once more the carriage moved on rapidly. There was one resource still
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
