| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: puzzled the magistrate. He somehow uncon-
sciously felt that this man, brought to him in fet-
ters and with a shorn head, guarded by two
soldiers who were waiting to take him back to
prison, had a free soul and was immeasurably su-
perior to himself. He was in consequence some-
what troubled, and had to summon up all his
courage in order to go on with the inquiry and
not blunder in his questions. He was amazed
that Stepan should narrate the story of his crimes
as if they had been things of long ago, and com-
The Forged Coupon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: and what might be safest, had been a point of some doubtful
consideration. Absolute neglect of the mother and sisters,
when invited to come, would be ingratitude. It must not be:
and yet the danger of a renewal of the acquaintance!--
After much thinking, she could determine on nothing better, than Harriet's
returning the visit; but in a way that, if they had understanding,
should convince them that it was to be only a formal acquaintance.
She meant to take her in the carriage, leave her at the Abbey Mill,
while she drove a little farther, and call for her again so soon,
as to allow no time for insidious applications or dangerous
recurrences to the past, and give the most decided proof of what
Emma |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: he knew enough about the natives, among whom seven years of his life
had been spent, to make his acquaintance worth having. He used
actually to laugh at Strickland as an ignorant man--"ignorant West
and East"--he said. His boast was, first, that he was an Oxford Man
of rare and shining parts, which may or may not have been true--I
did not know enough to check his statements--and, secondly, that he
"had his hand on the pulse of native life"--which was a fact. As an
Oxford man, he struck me as a prig: he was always throwing his
education about. As a Mahommedan faquir--as McIntosh Jellaludin--he
was all that I wanted for my own ends. He smoked several pounds of
my tobacco, and taught me several ounces of things worth knowing;
|
