| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: Directly I had grappled with the difficulty he caused another to
present itself, and when that, too, was met he stuck another ship
before me, creating a very dangerous situation. I felt slightly
outraged by this ingenuity in piling trouble upon a man.
"I wouldn't have got into that mess," I suggested, mildly. "I
could have seen that ship before."
He never stirred the least bit.
"No, you couldn't. The weather's thick."
"Oh! I didn't know," I apologized blankly.
I suppose that after all I managed to stave off the smash with
sufficient approach to verisimilitude, and the ghastly business
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: "Oh, yes!" said Winterbourne; "I have the pleasure of knowing your son."
Randolph's mamma was silent; she turned her attention to the lake.
But at last she spoke. "Well, I don't see how he lives!"
"Anyhow, it isn't so bad as it was at Dover," said Daisy Miller.
"And what occurred at Dover?" Winterbourne asked.
"He wouldn't go to bed at all. I guess he sat up all night
in the public parlor. He wasn't in bed at twelve o'clock:
I know that."
"It was half-past twelve," declared Mrs. Miller with mild emphasis.
"Does he sleep much during the day?" Winterbourne demanded.
"I guess he doesn't sleep much," Daisy rejoined.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: forgotten civilisation--ruined cities, which, on excavation, are
found to rest on ruins of earlier cities, city upon city, and
fourteen cities, down to a stratum where, still earlier, wandering
herdsmen drove their flocks, and where, even preceding them, wild
hunters chased their prey long after the cave-man and the man of
the squatting-place cracked the knuckle-bones of wild animals and
vanished from the earth. There is nothing terrible about it.
With Richard Hovey, when he faced his death, we can say: "Behold!
I have lived!" And with another and greater one, we can lay
ourselves down with a will. The one drop of living, the one taste
of being, has been good; and perhaps our greatest achievement will
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