| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: scarf:
"Tell me, Mr. d'Alcacer, you who can look on it calmly, wouldn't
I be right?"
"Why, has Jorgenson told you anything?"
"Directly--nothing, except a phrase or two which really I could
not understand. They seemed to have a hidden sense and he
appeared to attach some mysterious importance to them that he
dared not explain to me."
"That was a risk on his part," exclaimed d'Alcacer. "And he
trusted you. Why you, I wonder!"
"Who can tell what notions he has in his head? Mr. d'Alcacer, I
 The Rescue |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: the gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation to romp.
Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it,
in this review, I should have missed the two or three dim elements
of comfort that still remained to me. I should not for instance have
been able to asseverate to my friend that I was certain--which was
so much to the good--that _I_ at least had not betrayed myself.
I should not have been prompted, by stress of need, by desperation
of mind--I scarce know what to call it--to invoke such further
aid to intelligence as might spring from pushing my colleague
fairly to the wall. She had told me, bit by bit, under pressure,
a great deal; but a small shifty spot on the wrong side of it
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: and seizing those front seats which his family had sat in since New York
had been New York; and so the wise fellow very prudently took every step
that would insure the Replacers' inviting him to occupy one of his own
chairs. I had almost forgotten little Gazza, the Italian nobleman, who
sold old furniture to new Americans. Gazza was not looking at the old
furniture of Kings Port, which must have filled his Vatican soul with
contempt; he was strolling back and forth in the street, with his head in
the air, humming, now loudly, now softly "La-la, la-la, E quando a la
predica in chiesa siederia, la-la-la-la;" and I thought to myself that,
were I the Pope, I should kick him into the Tiber.
When Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael came back with the keys and their
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