| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: tion of getting a couple quid out of him by writ-
ing a lot of silly nonsense in a letter. That lark did
not come off, though. We had to clear out--and
none too soon. But this time I've a chum waiting
for me in London, and besides . . ."
Bessie Carvil was breathing quickly.
"What if I tried a knock at the door?" he sug-
gested.
"Try," she said.
Captain Hagberd's gate squeaked, and the shad-
ow of the son moved on, then stopped with another
To-morrow |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: the country, people saw a gap in the city ranks, and the
sun looked through between the chimneys in an unwonted
place. And all over the world, in London, in Canada, in
New Zealand, fancy what a multitude of people could
exclaim with truth: 'The house that I was born in fell
last night!'
CHAPTER III.
THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE.
TIME has wrought its changes most notably around the
precincts of St. Giles's Church. The church itself, if
it were not for the spire, would be unrecognisable; the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: military secrets. The date had stuck in Winston's memory because it chanced
to be midsummer day; but the whole story must be on record in countless
other places as well. There was only one possible conclusion: the
confessions were lies.
Of course, this was not in itself a discovery. Even at that time Winston
had not imagined that the people who were wiped out in the purges had
actually committed the crimes that they were accused of. But this was
concrete evidence; it was a fragment of the abolished past, like a fossil
bone which turns up in the wrong stratum and destroys a geological theory.
It was enough to blow the Party to atoms, if in some way it could have
been published to the world and its significance made known.
1984 |
