| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: being to take in my view what I had passed by before, I was obliged
to go off to the left hand, to Alresford and Winchester.
Alresford was a flourishing market-town, and remarkable for this--
that though it had no great trade, and particularly very little, if
any, manufactures, yet there was no collection in the town for the
poor, nor any poor low enough to take alms of the parish, which is
what I do not think can be said of any town in England besides.
But this happy circumstance, which so distinguished Alresford from
all her neighbours, was brought to an end in the year -, when by a
sudden and surprising fire the whole town, with both the church and
the market-house, was reduced to a heap of rubbish; and, except a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: times they went up on deck, only to look at the coast, as if it
could tell them something of his fate. It stretched away,
lengthening in the distance, mute, naked, and savage, veiled now
and then by the slanting cold shafts of rain. The westerly swell
rolled its interminable angry lines of foam and big dark clouds
flew over the ship in a sinister procession.
"I wish to goodness you had done what your little friend in the
yellow hat wanted you to do," said the commander of the sloop late
in the afternoon with visible exasperation.
"Do you, sir?" answered Byrne, bitter with positive anguish. "I
wonder what you would have said afterwards? Why! I might have
Within the Tides |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: enough of my red sash; and my knife filled them with awe.
'They make them like that in England,' said the boy with one arm.
I was glad he did not know how badly we make them in England now-a-
days. 'They are for people who go away to sea,' he added, 'and to
defend one's life against great fish.'
I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure to the little
group at every word. And so I suppose I was. Even my pipe,
although it was an ordinary French clay pretty well 'trousered,' as
they call it, would have a rarity in their eyes, as a thing coming
from so far away. And if my feathers were not very fine in
themselves, they were all from over seas. One thing in my outfit,
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