| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: the subject as the three started together toward the road.
"Then, again, no doctor was sent for!" he exclaimed,
as if resuming a familiar subject with the girl. Then he
turned to Theron. "I dare-say you have no such trouble;
but with our poorer people it is very vexing.
They will not call in a physician, but hurry off first
for the clergyman. I don't know that it is altogether
to avoid doctor's bills, but it amounts to that in effect.
Of course in this case it made no difference; but I have
had to make it a rule not to go out at night unless they
bring me a physician's card with his assurance that it
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: life with a licensed victualler of the more common sort, she
provided for the years of widowhood by letting furnished apartments
for gentlemen near Vauxhall Bridge Road in a square once of some
splendour and still included in the district of Belgravia. This
topographical fact was of some advantage in advertising her rooms;
but the patrons of the worthy widow were not exactly of the
fashionable kind. Such as they were, her daughter Winnie helped to
look after them. Traces of the French descent which the widow
boasted of were apparent in Winnie too. They were apparent in the
extremely neat and artistic arrangement of her glossy dark hair.
Winnie had also other charms: her youth; her full, rounded form;
The Secret Agent |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: where the sun is setting; one cloud like a triumphal arch,
another like a lion, a third like a pair of scissors. . . . From
behind the clouds a broad, green shaft of light pierces through
and stretches to the middle of the sky; a little later another,
violet-coloured, lies beside it; next that, one of gold, then one
rose-coloured. . . . The sky turns a soft lilac. Looking at this
gorgeous, enchanted sky, at first the ocean scowls, but soon it,
too, takes tender, joyous, passionate colours for which it is
hard to find a name in human speech.
THE STUDENT
AT first the weather was fine and still. The thrushes were
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