| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: redeemed the impiety of the son's last act.
Some months later, the poor woman, half beside herself with grief, and
moved by one of those inexplicable thirsts which misery feels to steep
its lips in the bitter chalice, determined to see the spot where her
son was drowned. Her instinct may have told her that thoughts of his
could be recovered beneath that poplar; perhaps, too, she desired to
see what his eyes had seen for the last time. Some mothers would die
of the sight; others give themselves up to it in saintly adoration.
Patient anatomists of human nature cannot too often enunciate the
truths before which all educations, laws, and philosophical systems
must give way. Let us repeat continually: it is absurd to force
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: An upright semi-grand piano near the door, flanked by two palms in
pots, executed suddenly all by itself a valse tune with aggressive
virtuosity. The din it raised was deafening. When it ceased, as
abruptly as it had started, the be-spectacled, dingy little man who
faced Ossipon behind a heavy glass mug full of beer emitted calmly
what had the sound of a general proposition.
"In principle what one of us may or may not know as to any given
fact can't be a matter for inquiry to the others."
"Certainly not," Comrade Ossipon agreed in a quiet undertone. "In
principle."
With his big florid face held between his hands he continued to
The Secret Agent |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: as a whole. The Old Town depends for much of its effect
on the new quarters that lie around it, on the
sufficiency of its situation, and on the hills that back
it up. If you were to set it somewhere else by itself,
it would look remarkably like Stirling in a bolder and
loftier edition. The point is to see this embellished
Stirling planted in the midst of a large, active, and
fantastic modern city; for there the two re-act in a
picturesque sense, and the one is the making of the
other.
The Old Town occupies a sloping ridge or tail of
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