| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: good way. So, you see, I am busy in a tumultuous, knotless sort of
fashion; and as I say, I take lots of exercise, and I'm as brown a
berry.
This is the first letter I've written for - O I don't know how
long.
JULY 30TH. - This is, I suppose, three weeks after I began. Do,
please, forgive me.
To the Highlands, first, to the Jenkins', then to Antwerp; thence,
by canoe with Simpson, to Paris and Grez (on the Loing, and an old
acquaintance of mine on the skirts of Fontainebleau) to complete
our cruise next spring (if we're all alive and jolly) by Loing and
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: which I have ever seen or could imagine to what is commonly
understood by the word "monster." That the source of the effect
produced was really moral I have no doubt. An utterly, hopelessly
depraved nature was expressed in physical terms, that taken each
separately had nothing positively startling. You imagined him
clammily cold to the touch, like a snake. The slightest reproof,
the most mild and justifiable remonstrance, would be met by a
resentful glare and an evil shrinking of his thin dry upper lip, a
snarl of hate to which he generally added the agreeable sound of
grinding teeth.
It was for this venomous performance rather than for his lies,
The Mirror of the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: shackle-pin, gives it a tap or two with a hammer just to make it
loose, and of course that cable wasn't safe any more. Riggers come
back - you know what riggers are: come day, go day, and God send
Sunday. Down goes the chain into the locker without their foreman
looking at the shackles at all. What does he care? He ain't going
in the ship. And two days later the ship goes to sea. . . "
At this point I was incautious enough to breathe out another "I
see," which gave offence again, and brought on me a rude "No, you
don't" - as before. But in the pause he remembered the glass of
beer at his elbow. He drank half of it, wiped his mustaches, and
remarked grimly -
Within the Tides |
