| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: craft and audacity against the very gods, it is only because the
Olympian gods are dead. Certainly no woman could frighten him. A
one-eyed giant would not have had the ghost of a chance against
Dominic Cervoni, of Corsica, not Ithaca; and no king, son of kings,
but of very respectable family - authentic Caporali, he affirmed.
But that is as it may be. The Caporali families date back to the
twelfth century.
For want of more exalted adversaries Dominic turned his audacity
fertile in impious stratagems against the powers of the earth, as
represented by the institution of Custom-houses and every mortal
belonging thereto - scribes, officers, and guardacostas afloat and
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: It was unspeakably comfortable to stretch our weary limbs
between the cool, damp sheets. And how we did sleep!--for
there is no opiate like Alpine pedestrianism.
In the morning we both awoke and leaped out of bed at the
same instant and ran and stripped aside the window-curtains;
but we suffered a bitter disappointment again: it
was already half past three in the afternoon.
We dressed sullenly and in ill spirits, each accusing
the other of oversleeping. Harris said if we had brought
the courier along, as we ought to have done, we should
not have missed these sunrises. I said he knew very well
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: come than to do a Count's pleasure for a twelvemonth? He will go off
and leave you some time or other; and when that day comes, you will
think of me . . . your servant, my pretty lady!'
"All this was simmering below the surface. The slightest approach at
love-making was made quite on the sly. Not a soul suspected that the
trim little old fogy was smitten with Antonia; and so prudent was the
elderly lover, that no rival could have guessed anything from his
behavior in the reading-room. For a couple of months Croizeau watched
the retired custom-house official; but before the third month was out
he had good reason to believe that his suspicions were groundless. He
exerted his ingenuity to scrape an acquaintance with Denisart, came up
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