| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: throwing himself violently about in the dark, roll-
ing on some dirty sacks, and biting his fists with
rage, cold, hunger, amazement, and despair.
"He was a mountaineer of the eastern range of
the Carpathians, and the vessel sunk the night be-
fore in Eastbay was the Hamburg emigrant-ship
Herzogin Sophia-Dorothea, of appalling mem-
ory.
"A few months later we could read in the papers
the accounts of the bogus 'Emigration Agencies'
among the Sclavonian peasantry in the more re-
Amy Foster |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: you want fuel come to the house and ask for coals, and let my
gates alone. I suppose you can enjoy a fire without stealing the
combustibles. Stow
256 pay me for my gate by telling me something I want to know."
"And a kind gentleman too, sir; blessings."
"What is the hemlock good for?"
"The hemlock, kind gentleman? For the evil, sir, to be sure."
"Scrofulous ulcers!" he exclaimed, recoiling. "The father of that
beautiful girl!" He turned homeward, and trudged along with his
head bent, muttering, "All rotten to the bone. Oh, civilization!
civilization! civilization!"
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: good speed. But the ocean was vast, and we did not know whither we
were sailing, and every hour the agony of thirst pressed us more
closely. Towards mid-day a child died suddenly and was thrown into
the sea, and some three hours later the mother filled a bailing
bowl and drank deep of the bitter water. For a while it seemed to
assuage her thirst, then suddenly a madness took her, and springing
up she cast herself overboard and sank. Before the sun, glowing
like a red-hot ball, had sunk beneath the horizon, the priest and I
were the only ones in that company who could sit upright--the rest
lay upon the bottom of the boat heaped one on another like dying
fish groaning in their misery. Night fell at last and brought us
Montezuma's Daughter |
