| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: sum (accompanied by plenty of specious reasoning) for a very little
service. Would he set aside for the Marquise the game that the Count
would bring? It seemed to Jacques to be a matter of no great
importance whether the partridge on which his mistress dined had been
shot by her keeper or by M. de Nueil, especially since the latter
particularly wished that the Marquise should know nothing about it.
"It was killed on her land," said the Count, and for some days Jacques
lent himself to the harmless deceit. Day after day M. de Nueil went
shooting, and came back at dinner-time with an empty bag. A whole week
went by in this way. Gaston grew bold enough to write a long letter to
the Marquise, and had it conveyed to her. It was returned to him
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: her last in a sea fit to turn your hair gray only a-looking at it.
I understand that the skipper, too, started raving like the rest of them.
The man had been deprived of sleep for more than a week, and to have
this sprung on him at the height of a furious gale nearly drove him
out of his mind. I wonder they didn't fling me overboard after
getting the carcass of their precious shipmate out of my fingers.
They had rather a job to separate us, I've been told. A sufficiently
fierce story to make an old judge and a respectable jury sit up a bit.
The first thing I heard when I came to myself was the maddening
howling of that endless gale, and on that the voice of the old man.
He was hanging on to my bunk, staring into my face out of his sou'wester.
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: These blue-books, which had cost the nation many thousands
of pounds, were positively sold to the paper mills as wastepaper,
and nearly 100 tons weight were carted away at about L3 per ton.
It is difficult to believe, although positively true,
that so great an act of vandalism could have been perpetrated,
even in a Government office. It is true that no demand existed
for some of them, but it is equally true that in numerous cases,
especially in the early specifications of the steam engine and
printing machine, the want of them has caused great disappointment.
To add a climax to the story, many of the "pulped" specifications
have had to be reprinted more than once since their destruction.
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