| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: in the paddock. The men have but now passed over it; I was
round in that very place to see the weeding was done
thoroughly, and already the reptile springs behind our heels.
Tuitui is a truly strange beast, and gives food for thought.
I am nearly sure - I cannot yet be quite, I mean to
experiment, when I am less on the hot chase of the beast -
that, even at the instant he shrivels up his leaves, he
strikes his prickles downward so as to catch the uprooting
finger; instinctive, say the gabies; but so is man's impulse
to strike out. One thing that takes and holds me is to see
the strange variation in the propagation of alarm among these
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: "Well, then, go to Luke, and I'll wait for what you promise.
Only, in return for that, satisfy, before you leave me,
one very much smaller request."
He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able still
a little to bargain. "Very much smaller--?"
"Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me"--oh, my work preoccupied me,
and I was offhand!--"if, yesterday afternoon, from the table in the hall,
you took, you know, my letter."
XXIV
My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something
that I can describe only as a fierce split of my attention--
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: colourless friend of Mr. Rathbone-Sanders. The talk lit by Amanda's
enthusiasm circled actively round Benham's expedition. It was clear
that the idea of giving some years to thinking out one's possible
work in the world was for some reason that remained obscure highly
irritating to both Mr. Rathbone-Sanders and the Byronic youth.
Betty too regarded it as levity when there was "so much to be done,"
and the topic whacked about and rose to something like a wrangle,
and sat down and rested and got up again reinvigorated, with a
continuity of interest that Benham had never yet encountered in any
London gathering. He made a good case for his modern version of the
Grand Tour, and he gave them something of his intellectual
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