| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: men standing still upon her decks, the master gazing intently
forward from the break of the poop. Gradually she loses her way,
hardly moving, with the three figures on her forecastle waiting
attentively about the cat-head for the last order of, perhaps, full
ninety days at sea: "Let go!"
This is the final word of a ship's ended journey, the closing word
of her toil and of her achievement. In a life whose worth is told
out in passages from port to port, the splash of the anchor's fall
and the thunderous rumbling of the chain are like the closing of a
distinct period, of which she seems conscious with a slight deep
shudder of all her frame. By so much is she nearer to her
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: of his great, hearty laughs, he walked off to his horse.
On the morrow of this meeting we forded the Tugela and entered the
territory that is now called Natal. Two days' short trekking through a
beautiful country brought us to some hills that I think were called
Pakadi, or else a chief named Pakadi lived there, I forget which.
Crossing these hills, on the further side of them, as Retief had told us
we should do, we found a large party of the trek-Boers, who were already
occupying this land on the hither side of the Bushman's River, little
knowing, poor people, that it was fated to become the grave of many of
them. To-day, and for all future time, that district is and will be
known by the name of Weenen, or the Place of Weeping, because of those
Marie |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: who might amuse them, in default of fighting-cocks, by puns and
repartees, and battles of logic; "how one thing cannot be predicated of
another," or "how the wise man is not only to overcome every misfortune,
but not even to feel it," and other such mighty questions, which in
those days hid that deep unbelief in any truth whatsoever which was
spreading fast over the minds of men. Such word-splitters were Stilpo
and Diodorus, the slayer and the slain. They were of the Megaran
school, and were named Dialectics; and also, with more truth, Eristics,
or quarrellers. Their clique had professed to follow Zeno and Socrates
in declaring the instability of sensible presumptions and conclusions,
in preaching an absolute and eternal Being. But there was this deep
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