| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: such a strict watch on himself, came out of his abstraction with a
start and a stiff smile.
"My foreman had some trouble with them during my absence. They
funk working in a certain field on the slope of the hill."
"A ghost here!" exclaimed the amused professor. "Then our whole
conception of the psychology of ghosts must be revised. This
island has been uninhabited probably since the dawn of ages. How
did a ghost come here. By air or water? And why did it leave its
native haunts. Was it from misanthropy? Was he expelled from some
community of spirits?"
Renouard essayed to respond in the same tone. The words died on
Within the Tides |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: and so forth, improvising after the old Norse fashion. Then Thormod
got up and went to the fire, and stood and warmed himself. And the
nurse-girl said to him, "Go out, man, and bring some of the split-
firewood which lies outside the door." He went out and brought an
armful of wood and threw it down. Then the nurse-girl looked him in
the face, and said, "Dreadful pale is this man. Why art thou so?"
Then sang Thormod:
"Thou wonderest, sweet bloom, at me,
A man so hideous to see.
The arrow-drift o'ertook me, girl,
A fine-ground arrow in the whirl
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: simple creature waited trustingly for them to be fulfilled, and
scarcely feared the danger any longer.
The soldier, holding fast to the vessel's side, never took his eyes
off the strange visitor. He copied on his own rough and swarthy
features the imperturbability of the other's face, applying to this
task the whole strength of a will and intelligence but little
corrupted in the course of a life of mechanical and passive obedience.
So emulous was he of a calm and tranquil courage greater than his own,
that at last, perhaps unconsciously, something of that mysterious
nature passed into his own soul. His admiration became an instinctive
zeal for this man, a boundless love for and belief in him, such a love
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