| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: duration. Perhaps my good housekeeper imagined that I planned a
return to the Great Eyrie, which she regarded as an ante-chamber of
hell itself. She said nothing, but went about her work with a most
despairing face. Nevertheless, sure as I was of her discretion, I
told her nothing. In this great mission I would confide in no one.
My choice of the two men to accompany me was easily made. They both
belonged to my own department, and had many times under my direct
command given proofs of their vigor, courage and intelligence. One,
John Hart, of Illinois, was a man of thirty years; the other, aged
thirty-two, was Nab Walker, of Massachusetts. I could not have had
better assistants.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: lessons here, if I am to learn them anywhere, and must be filled
with joy if my feet are on the right road and my face set towards
'the gate which is called beautiful,' though I may fall many times
in the mire and often in the mist go astray.
This New Life, as through my love of Dante I like sometimes to call
it, is of course no new life at all, but simply the continuance, by
means of development, and evolution, of my former life. I remember
when I was at Oxford saying to one of my friends as we were
strolling round Magdalen's narrow bird-haunted walks one morning in
the year before I took my degree, that I wanted to eat of the fruit
of all the trees in the garden of the world, and that I was going
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: youth!
"We left London in ballast--sand ballast--to load a
cargo of coal in a northern port for Bankok. Bankok!
I thrilled. I had been six years at sea, but had only seen
Melbourne and Sydney, very good places, charming
places in their way--but Bankok!
"We worked out of the Thames under canvas, with a
North Sea pilot on board. His name was Jermyn, and
he dodged all day long about the galley drying his hand-
kerchief before the stove. Apparently he never slept.
He was a dismal man, with a perpetual tear sparkling
Youth |
