| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: survey. "Nor yet this couple going up the stairs now."
The piano at the foot of the staircase clanged through a mazurka
with brazen impetuosity, as though a vulgar and impudent ghost were
showing off. The keys sank and rose mysteriously. Then all became
still. For a moment Ossipon imagined the overlighted place changed
into a dreadful black hole belching horrible fumes choked with
ghastly rubbish of smashed brickwork and mutilated corpses. He had
such a distinct perception of ruin and death that he shuddered
again. The other observed, with an air of calm sufficiency:
"In the last instance it is character alone that makes for one's
safety. There are very few people in the world whose character is
The Secret Agent |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: before it and whelmed the scene; the wind stormed with a
sudden fierceness that carried away the minister's voice and
twitched his tails and made him stagger, and turned the
congregation for a moment into a mere pother of blowing
plaid-ends and prancing horses; and the rain followed and was
dashed straight into their faces. Men and women panted aloud
in the shock of that violent shower-bath; the teeth were
bared along all the line in an involuntary grimace; plaids,
mantles, and riding-coats were proved vain, and the
worshippers felt the water stream on their naked flesh. The
minister, reinforcing his great and shrill voice, continued
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: "In hoc loco quiescit Corpus S. Etheldredi, Regis West Saxonum,
Martyris, qui Anno Dom. DCCCLXXII., xxiii Aprilis, per Manos
Danorum Paganorum Occubuit."
In English thus:-
"Here rests the Body of Holy Etheldred, King of the West Saxons,
and Martyr, who fell by the Hands of the Pagan Danes in the Year of
our Lord 872, the 23rd of April."
Here are also the monuments of the great Marchioness of Exeter,
mother of Edward Courtney, Earl of Devonshire, and last of the
family of Courtneys who enjoyed that honour; as also of John de
Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and his wife, grandmother of King Henry
|
