| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Cruise of the Jasper B. by Don Marquis: become rigidly formal in his practice, or, in a revolt from his
own formalism, be seduced into a display of showy, sensational
tricks that are all very well in the studio but dangerous to
their practitioner on the actual dueling ground.
The Italian, looser, freer, less formal, more individual in his
style, springing from a line of forbears who have preferred the
thrust to the cut, the point to the edge, for centuries, is a
more instinctive and less intellectual swordsman than the
Frenchman. It is in his blood; he uses his rapier with a wild
and angry grace that is feline.
The Frenchman, even when he is thoroughly serious in his desire
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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: I asked him right away to leave my cabin door unlocked
at night while the ship was going through Sunda Straits.
There would be the Java coast within two or three miles,
off Angier Point. I wanted nothing more. I've had a prize
for swimming my second year in the Conway."
"I can believe it," I breathed out.
"God only knows why they locked me in every night.
To see some of their faces you'd have thought they
were afraid I'd go about at night strangling people.
Am I a murdering brute? Do I look it? By Jove! If I had been
he wouldn't have trusted himself like that into my room.
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: forth his zeal in a shower of loud taps on the boards of the
pulpit, which responded so smartly that, at last, to my unspeakable
relief, they woke me. And what was it that had suggested the
tremendous tumult? What had played Jabez's part in the row?
Merely the branch of a fir-tree that touched my lattice as the
blast wailed by, and rattled its dry cones against the panes! I
listened doubtingly an instant; detected the disturber, then turned
and dozed, and dreamt again: if possible, still more disagreeably
than before.
This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard
distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard,
Wuthering Heights |
