| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: that the collected ideas to which we give the name of feelings may
very possibly be the material outcome of some fluid which is generated
in all men, more or less abundantly, according to the way in which
their organs absorb, from the medium in which they live, the
elementary atoms that produce it. We went crazy over catalepsy; and
with the eagerness that boys throw into every pursuit, we endeavored
to endure pain by thinking of something else. We exhausted ourselves
by making experiments not unlike those of the epileptic fanatics of
the last century, a religious mania which will some day be of service
to the science of humanity. I would stand on Lambert's chest,
remaining there for several minutes without giving him the slightest
Louis Lambert |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: an earnest, unplayful fashion, being blessed besides by three
healthy, active, self-reliant children, all girls. They were all
pedestrians too. Even the youngest would wander away for miles if
not restrained. Mrs. Fyne had a ruddy out-of-doors complexion and
wore blouses with a starched front like a man's shirt, a stand-up
collar and a long necktie. Marlow had made their acquaintance one
summer in the country, where they were accustomed to take a cottage
for the holidays . . .
At this point we were interrupted by Mr. Powell who declared that he
must leave us. The tide was on the turn, he announced coming away
from the window abruptly. He wanted to be on board his cutter
Chance |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: sea, like the air, was in perpetual bustle. The swell crowded into
the narrow anchorage like sheep into a fold; broke all along both
sides, high on the one, low on the other; kept a certain blowhole
sounding and smoking like a cannon; and spent itself at last upon
the beach.
On the side away from Atuona, the sheltering promontory was a
nursery of coco-trees. Some were mere infants, none had attained
to any size, none had yet begun to shoot skyward with that whip-
like shaft of the mature palm. In the young trees the colour
alters with the age and growth. Now all is of a grass-like hue,
infinitely dainty; next the rib grows golden, the fronds remaining
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