| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: which, when opened, hopefully turned out to my
infinite consternation to be filled with verses--page
after page of rhymed doggerel of a jovial and im-
proper character, written in the neatest minute hand
I ever did see. In the same fiddle-case a photograph
of my predecessor, taken lately in Saigon, repre-
sented in front of a garden view, and in company
of a female in strange draperies, an elderly, squat,
rugged man of stern aspect in a clumsy suit of black
broadcloth, and with the hair brushed forward above
the temples in a manner reminding one of a boar's
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: women,--all creatures of her husband,--when, passing into her oratory,
she found that the count had locked the only door that led to their
apartments. This was a horrible discovery. Such precautions taken to
isolate her showed a desire to proceed without witnesses to some
horrible execution. As moment after moment she lost hope, the pangs of
childbirth grew stronger and keener. A presentiment of murder, joined
to the fatigue of her efforts, overcame her last remaining strength.
She was like a shipwrecked man who sinks, borne under by one last wave
less furious than others he has vanquished. The bewildering pangs of
her condition kept her from knowing the lapse of time. At the moment
when she felt that, alone, without help, she was about to give birth
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: as an oven, too. I took a peep at my double, and discovered
that he had not moved, his arm was still over his eyes; but his
chest heaved; his hair was wet; his chin glistened with perspiration.
I reached over him and opened the port.
"I must show myself on deck," I reflected.
Of course, theoretically, I could do what I liked, with no
one to say nay to me within the whole circle of the horizon;
but to lock my cabin door and take the key away I did not dare.
Directly I put my head out of the companion I saw the group
of my two officers, the second mate barefooted, the chief
mate in long India-rubber boots, near the break of the poop,
The Secret Sharer |
