| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: and before entering upon so vast a subject, permit me once
more to fill our glasses. Disputation is dry work,' he
added, with a charming gaiety of manner.
Once more accordingly the pair pledged each other in a
stalwart grog; and Zero, leaning back with an air of some
complacency, proceeded more largely to develop his opinions.
'The indiscriminate?' he began. 'War, my dear sir, is
indiscriminate. War spares not the child; it spares not the
barrow of the harmless scavenger. No more,' he concluded,
beaming, 'no more do I. Whatever may strike fear, whatever
may confound or paralyse the activities of the guilty nation,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: was sealed. He had gone from the provinces to Paris; he had led the
feverish life of Paris; and now he would have sunk back into the
lifeless life of the provinces, but for a chance remark which reached
his ear--a few words that called up a swift rush of such emotion as he
might have felt when a strain of really good music mingles with the
accompaniment of some tedious opera.
"You went to call on Mme. de Beauseant yesterday, did you not?" The
speaker was an elderly lady, and she addressed the head of the local
royal family.
"I went this morning. She was so poorly and depressed, that I could
not persuade her to dine with us to-morrow."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: I scrambled up on it and rested myself for a bit.
Then I made another start. That last spell must have been
over a mile."
His whisper was getting fainter and fainter, and all the time
he stared straight out through the porthole, in which there
was not even a star to be seen. I had not interrupted him.
There was something that made comment impossible in his narrative,
or perhaps in himself; a sort of feeling, a quality, which I can't find
a name for. And when he ceased, all I found was a futile whisper:
"So you swam for our light?"
"Yes--straight for it. It was something to swim for.
The Secret Sharer |
