| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: only can give you. In that look of hers there was the pardonable
curiosity of the mistress of the house confronted with a guest
dropped down upon her from the skies and innumerable doubts,
certainly warranted by the state of my clothes, by my youth and
my expression, all singularly at variance; there was all the
disdain of the adored mistress, in whose eyes all men save one
are as nothing; there were involuntary tremors and alarms; and,
above all, the thought that it was tiresome to have an unexpected
guest just now, when, no doubt, she had been scheming to enjoy
full solitude for her love. This mute eloquence I understood in
her eyes, and all the pity and compassion in me made answer in a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared
with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life
presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary
moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal
and by the singleness of its purpose.
The riding light in the forerigging burned with a clear, untroubled,
as if symbolic, flame, confident and bright in the mysterious
shades of the night. Passing on my way aft along the other side
of the ship, I observed that the rope side ladder, put over, no doubt,
for the master of the tug when he came to fetch away our letters,
had not been hauled in as it should have been. I became annoyed at this,
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: We reached Chicago in the evening. I was turned out of the cars,
bundled into an omnibus, and driven off through the streets to the
station of a different railroad. Chicago seemed a great and gloomy
city. I remember having subscribed, let us say sixpence, towards
its restoration at the period of the fire; and now when I beheld
street after street of ponderous houses and crowds of comfortable
burghers, I thought it would be a graceful act for the corporation
to refund that sixpence, or, at the least, to entertain me to a
cheerful dinner. But there was no word of restitution. I was that
city's benefactor, yet I was received in a third-class waiting-
room, and the best dinner I could get was a dish of ham and eggs at
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