| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: wild gust of wind out of a gully high up on the cliffs struck on
our rigging a harsh and plaintive note like the wail of a forsaken
soul.
CHAPTER I
By half-past seven in the morning, the ship being then inside the
harbour at last and moored within a long stone's-throw from the
quay, my stock of philosophy was nearly exhausted. I was dressing
hurriedly in my cabin when the steward came tripping in with a
morning suit over his arm.
Hungry, tired, and depressed, with my head engaged inside a white
shirt irritatingly stuck together by too much starch, I desired him
'Twixt Land & Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: modified largely (20) before they come to correspond with what we
know was the actual state of fact. Similarly, Polybius will deal
only with those forces which tended to bring the civilised world
under the dominion of Rome (ix. 1), and in the Thucydidean spirit
points out the want of picturesqueness and romance in his pages
which is the result of the abstract method ([Greek text which
cannot be reproduced]) being careful also to tell us that his
rejection of all other forces is essentially deliberate and the
result of a preconceived theory and by no means due to carelessness
of any kind.
Now, of the general value of the abstract method and the legality
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: without alarming Madame de Vaudremont? Or is it because I came only a
month ago into the Promised Land? How insolent you can be, you men in
office, who sit glued to your chairs while we are dodging shot and
shell! Come, Monsieur le Maitre des Requetes, allow us to glean in the
field of which you can only have precarious possession from the moment
when we evacuate it. The deuce is in it! We have a right to live! My
good friend, if you knew the German women, you would, I believe, do me
a good turn with the Parisian you love best."
"Well, General, since you have vouchsafed to turn your attention to
that lady, whom I never saw till now, have the charity to tell me if
you have seen her dance."
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