| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: and then by fire.
Those things I remember, but what I was reading the day before my
writing life began I have forgotten. I have only a vague notion
that it might have been one of Trollope's political novels. And
I remember, too, the character of the day. It was an autumn day
with an opaline atmosphere, a veiled, semi-opaque, lustrous day,
with fiery points and flashes of red sunlight on the roofs and
windows opposite, while the trees of the square, with all their
leaves gone, were like the tracings of India ink on a sheet of
tissue-paper. It was one of those London days that have the charm
of mysterious amenity, of fascinating softness. The effect of
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: bodies were all strings and springs and we could do
anything.
Broken-Tooth displayed remarkable agility in the game.
He was "It" less frequently than any of us, and in the
course of the game he discovered one difficult "slip"
that neither Lop-Ear nor I was able to accomplish. To
be truthful, we were afraid to attempt it.
When we were "It," Broken-Tooth always ran out to the
end of a lofty branch in a certain tree. From the end
of the branch to the ground it must have been seventy
feet, and nothing intervened to break a fall. But
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: First, the palace: do you imagine that a building, beautified in every
way at an enormous cost, will afford you greater pride and ornament
than a whole city ringed with walls and battlements, whose furniture
consists of temples and pillared porticoes,[2] harbours, market-
places?
[2] Reading {parastasi}, properly "pillasters" (Poll. i. 76. 10. 25) =
"antae," hence "templum in antis" (see Vitruv. iii. 2. 2); or more
widely the entrance of a temple or other building. (Possibly the
author is thinking of "the Propylea").Cf. Eur. "Phoen." 415; "I.
T." 1159. = {stathmoi}, Herod. i. 179; Hom. "Il." xiv. 167; "Od."
vii. 89, {stathmoi d' argureoi en khalkeo estasan oudio}.
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