| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our eyes were
relieved to find a patch of green that had escaped the suf-
focating drift. We went through Bushey Park, with its deer
going to and fro under the chestnuts, and some men and
women hurrying in the distance towards Hampton, and so we
came to Twickenham. These were the first people we saw.
Away across the road the woods beyond Ham and Peter-
sham were still afire. Twickenham was uninjured by either
Heat-Ray or Black Smoke, and there were more people about
here, though none could give us news. For the most part
they were like ourselves, taking advantage of a lull to shift
War of the Worlds |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: know? Oh, I am blind--blind and little!"
She could not bear to face him for a moment, and she hung her head. Her
intelligence seemed concentrating swift, wild thoughts round the shock to
her consciousness. By that terrible expression of his face, by those
thundering words of scorn, would she come to realize the mighty truth of
his descent into the abyss and his rise to the heights. Vaguely she began
to see. An awful sense of her deadness, of her soul-blighting selfishness,
began to dawn upon her as something monstrous out of dim, gray obscurity.
She trembled under the reality of thoughts that were not new. How she had
babbled about Glenn and the crippled soldiers! How she had imagined she
sympathized! But she had only been a vain, worldly, complacent, effusive
The Call of the Canyon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: talk of his campaigns, which began at Friedland and ended some
where in the neighbourhood of Bar-le-Duc. His admiration of the
great Emperor was unreserved in everything but expression. Like
the religion of earnest men, it was too profound a sentiment to
be displayed before a world of little faith. Apart from that he
seemed as completely devoid of military anecdotes as though he
had hardly ever seen a soldier in his life. Proud of his
decorations earned before he was twenty-five, he refused to wear
the ribbons at the buttonhole in the manner practised to this day
in Europe and even was unwilling to display the insignia on
festive occasions, as though he wished to conceal them in the
A Personal Record |
