| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: very sunken in daylight, his eyelids lowered under the stern, dark line
of his eyebrows drawn together by a slight frown.
When I left him there to go back to my room the steward
was finishing dusting. I sent for the mate and engaged him
in some insignificant conversation. It was, as it were,
trifling with the terrific character of his whiskers; but my object
was to give him an opportunity for a good look at my cabin.
And then I could at last shut, with a clear conscience, the door
of my stateroom and get my double back into the recessed part.
There was nothing else for it. He had to sit still on a small
folding stool, half smothered by the heavy coats hanging there.
The Secret Sharer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: pagus unus, cum domo exisset, patrum nostrorum memoria L. Cassium consulem
interfecerat et eius exercitum sub iugum miserat. Ita sive casu sive
consilio deorum immortalium quae pars civitatis Helvetiae insignem
calamitatem populo Romano intulerat, ea princeps poenam persolvit. Qua in
re Caesar non solum publicas, sed etiam privatas iniurias ultus est, quod
eius soceri L. Pisonis avum, L. Pisonem legatum, Tigurini eodem proelio
quo Cassium interfecerant.
Hoc proelio facto, reliquas copias Helvetiorum ut consequi posset,
pontem in Arari faciendum curat atque ita exercitum traducit. Helvetii
repentino eius adventu commoti cum id quod ipsi diebus XX aegerrime
confecerant, ut flumen transirent, illum uno die fecisse intellegerent,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: It was dark, and before he had passed the second house he was
lost to sight. She only knew he was there because the dog at the
priest's house was barking.
'So that is what my dream meant! Pashenka is what I ought to
have been but failed to be. I lived for men on the pretext of
living for God, while she lived for God imagining that she lives
for men. Yes, one good deed--a cup of water given without
thought of reward--is worth more than any benefit I imagined I
was bestowing on people. But after all was there not some share
of sincere desire to serve God?' he asked himself, and the answer
was: 'Yes, there was, but it was all soiled and overgrown by
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