| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: sometimes a scoundrel who has rifled a bird's nest or killed a
harmless snake encourages the children to go and do likewise by
putting his victims into an imitation nest and bottle and exhibiting
them as aids to "Nature study." A suggestion that Nature is worth
study would certainly have staggered my schoolmasters; so perhaps I
may admit a gleam of progress here. But as any child who attempted to
handle these dusty objects would probably be caned, I do not attach
any importance to such modernities in school furniture. The school
remains what it was in my boyhood, because its real object remains
what it was. And that object, I repeat, is to keep the children out
of mischief: mischief meaning for the most part worrying the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates: Daphne, and she and Jonah called another taxi, and said they
would see us at the hotel. Satisfied that the conductor of the
hotel omnibus was collecting our luggage, I followed Jill and
Berry into the cab, and we drove out of the station.
When we reached the hotel, Berry told the porter that he need not
uncover, as he was travelling incognito, and asked if Mrs.
Pleydel had arrived. Receiving a negative answer, he gave the
man five marks and asked him to be very careful as to the way he
lifted the cat's basket out of his wife's cab. Then he suffered
himself to be conducted to the sitting-room which I had engaged
on the first floor.
The Brother of Daphne |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: its drenched pomegranates and pine-apples, and while the refulgent
dawn of the tropics kindled round me--I reasoned thus, Jane--and now
listen; for it was true Wisdom that consoled me in that hour, and
showed me the right path to follow.
"The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed
leaves, and the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty; my
heart, dried up and scorched for a long time, swelled to the tone,
and filled with living blood--my being longed for renewal--my soul
thirsted for a pure draught. I saw hope revive--and felt
regeneration possible. From a flowery arch at the bottom of my
garden I gazed over the sea--bluer than the sky: the old world was
Jane Eyre |
