| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: coast, would make a sudden sally upon the group, enveloping it for
a couple of hours in whirlwinds and bluish-black murk of a
particularly sinister aspect. Then, with the lowered rattan-
screens rattling desperately in the wind and the bungalow shaking
all over, Freya would sit down to the piano and play fierce Wagner
music in the flicker of blinding flashes, with thunderbolts falling
all round, enough to make your hair stand on end; and Jasper would
remain stock still on the verandah, adoring the back view of her
supple, swaying figure, the miraculous sheen of her fair head, the
rapid hands on the keys, the white nape of her neck - while the
brig, down at the point there, surged at her cables within a
'Twixt Land & Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: ideal descends from his pedestal to make a seventeen-year locust of
himself.'
"Mame looked me straight in the eye until she had corkscrewed my
reflections.
"'Jeff,' says she, 'it isn't quite like you to talk that way. I don't
care to hear Ed Collier ridiculed. A man may do ridiculous things, but
they don't look ridiculous to the girl he does 'em for. That was one
man in a hundred. He stopped eating just to please me. I'd be hard-
hearted and ungrateful if I didn't feel kindly toward him. Could you
do what he did?'
"'I know,' says I, seeing the point, 'I'm condemned. I can't help it.
Heart of the West |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: so far. "I was still out there in my strange darkness - where was
it, what was it? I must have stayed there so long." He could but
wonder at the depth and the duration of his swoon.
"Since last night?" she asked with a shade of fear for her possible
indiscretion.
"Since this morning - it must have been: the cold dim dawn of to-
day. Where have I been," he vaguely wailed, "where have I been?"
He felt her hold him close, and it was as if this helped him now to
make in all security his mild moan. "What a long dark day!"
All in her tenderness she had waited a moment. "In the cold dim
dawn?" she quavered.
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