| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: He looked upon the sea with indifferent, unseeing
eyes. His wife had snatched the child out of his
arms one day as he sat on the doorstep crooning to
it a song such as the mothers sing to babies in his
mountains. She seemed to think he was doing it
some harm. Women are funny. And she had ob-
jected to him praying aloud in the evening. Why?
He expected the boy to repeat the prayer aloud
after him by-and-by, as he used to do after his old
father when he was a child--in his own country.
And I discovered he longed for their boy to grow
Amy Foster |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: second, the plodder, who works the piece into shape; and third, the
toucher-up, who sets the songs to music, arranges the chorus and
concerted pieces and fits them into their right place, and finally
writes the puffs and advertisements. Du Bruel was a plodder; at the
office he read the newest books, extracted their wit, and laid it by
for use in his dialogues. He was liked by his collaborators on account
of his carefulness; the man with brains, sure of being understood,
could cross his arms and feel that his ideas would be well rendered.
The clerks in the office liked their companion well enough to attend a
first performance of his plays in a body and applaud them, for he
really deserved the title of a good fellow. His hand went readily to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Of uncreated failure; we forget,
The while we groan, that God's accomplishment
Is always and unfailingly at hand.
III
To mortal ears the plainest word may ring
Fantastic and unheard-of, and as false
And out of tune as ever to our own
Did ring the prayers of man-made maniacs;
But if that word be the plain word of Truth,
It leaves an echo that begets itself,
Persistent in itself and of itself,
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