| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: of ridges, ribs of gray rock under the dark mantle of matted leafage.
Unknown to trade, to travel, almost to geography, the manner
of life they harbor is an unsolved secret. There must be villages--
settlements of fishermen at least--on the largest of them, and some
communication with the world is probably kept up by native craft.
But all that forenoon, as we headed for them, fanned along by
the faintest of breezes, I saw no sign of man or canoe in the field
of the telescope I kept on pointing at the scattered group.
At noon I have no orders for a change of course, and the mate's
whiskers became much concerned and seemed to be offering themselves
unduly to my notice. At last I said:
The Secret Sharer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: business with Mr. Woodhouse, his approbation of the whole; not so
openly as he might have done had her father been out of the room,
but speaking plain enough to be very intelligible to Emma.
He had been used to think her unjust to Jane, and had now great
pleasure in marking an improvement.
"A very pleasant evening," he began, as soon as Mr. Woodhouse
had been talked into what was necessary, told that he understood,
and the papers swept away;--"particularly pleasant. You and Miss
Fairfax gave us some very good music. I do not know a more
luxurious state, sir, than sitting at one's ease to be entertained
a whole evening by two such young women; sometimes with music
Emma |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: side of him. He looked far down the facade, and realized more
thoroughly how it threatened him. Grimness was in every feature,
and to its very bowels the inimical shape was desolation.
By one of those familiar conjunctions of things wherewith the
inanimate world baits the mind of man when he pauses in moments of
suspense, opposite Knight's eyes was an imbedded fossil, standing
forth in low relief from the rock. It was a creature with eyes.
The eyes, dead and turned to stone, were even now regarding him.
It was one of the early crustaceans called Trilobites. Separated
by millions of years in their lives, Knight and this underling
seemed to have met in their death. It was the single instance
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
