| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: exalted hand, folded it in four (it was a sheet of
blue foolscap) and presented it to me--a gift of ex-
traordinary potency, for, as I put it in my pocket,
my head swam a little.
"This is your appointment to the command," he
said with a certain gravity. "An official appoint-
ment binding the owners to conditions which you
have accepted. Now--when will you be ready to
go?"
I said I would be ready that very day if neces-
sary. He caught me at my word with great
The Shadow Line |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: to the locksmith's face again, said, with an air of courtesy and
patronage, 'You were observing, Mr Varden--'
'That she never,' returned the locksmith, who was not to be
diverted by any artifice from his firm manner, and his steady gaze,
'that she never looked towards him once, Sir John; and so she died,
and he forgot her. But, some years afterwards, a man was
sentenced to die the same death, who was a gipsy too; a sunburnt,
swarthy fellow, almost a wild man; and while he lay in prison,
under sentence, he, who had seen the hangman more than once while
he was free, cut an image of him on his stick, by way of braving
death, and showing those who attended on him, how little he cared
Barnaby Rudge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: method of taking the line of least resistance to getting it, are
too common in English society to call for any special remark.
Her vitality, her thrift, her energy, her outspokenness, her wise
care of her daughter, and the managing capacity which has enabled
her and her sister to climb from the fried fish shop down by the
Mint to the establishments of which she boasts, are all high
English social virtues. Her defence of herself is so
overwhelming that it provokes the St James Gazette to declare
that "the tendency of the play is wholly evil" because "it
contains one of the boldest and most specious defences of an
immoral life for poor women that has ever been penned." Happily
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