| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: the rock in the wilderness. I have kept the secret of this
squandering of a treasure belonging to Holy Church, but I am
permitted to reveal the mystery in articulo mortis to my son. You
will find the flask in a drawer in that Gothic table that always
stands by the head of the bed. . . . The precious little crystal
flask may be of use yet again for you, dearest Felipe. Will you
swear to me, by your salvation, to carry out my instructions
faithfully?"
Felipe looked at his father, and Don Juan was too deeply learned
in the lore of the human countenance not to die in peace with
that look as his warrant, as his own father had died in despair
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: being cut up, much as the crew of a whaler might cut up a moored whale.
They were cutting off the flesh in strips, and on some of the farther
trunks the white ribs were showing. It was the sound of their hatchets
that made that chid, chid. Some way away a thing like a trolley cable,
drawn and loaded with chunks of lax meat, was running up the slope of the
cavern floor. This enormous long avenue of hulls that were destined to be
food, gave us a sense of the vast populousness of the moon world second
only to the effect of our first glimpse down the shaft.
It seemed to me at first that the Selenites must be standing on
trestle-supported planks, and then I saw that the planks and supports and
their hatchets were really of the same leaden hue as my fetters had seemed
The First Men In The Moon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: makes a seaman. And it is very possible, too, that I love the
letters in the same way a literary man may love the sea he looks
at from the shore--a scene of great endeavour and of great
achievements changing the face of the world, the great open way
to all sorts of undiscovered countries. No, perhaps I had better
say that the life at sea--and I don't mean a mere taste of it,
but a good broad span of years, something that really counts as
real service--is not, upon the whole, a good equipment for a
writing life. God forbid, though, that I should be thought of as
denying my masters of the quarter-deck. I am not capable of that
sort of apostasy. I have confessed my attitude of piety toward
A Personal Record |
