| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: At the stile I looked back at his receding figure. His bearing had changed
remarkably, he seemed limp, shrunken. The contrast with his former
gesticulating, zuzzoing self took me in some absurd way as pathetic. I
watched him out of sight. Then wishing very heartily I had kept to my own
business, I returned to my bungalow and my play.
The next evening I saw nothing of him, nor the next. But he was very much
in my mind, and it had occurred to me that as a sentimental comic
character he might serve a useful purpose in the development of my plot.
The third day he called upon me.
For a time I was puzzled to think what had brought him. He made
indifferent conversation in the most formal way, then abruptly he came to
The First Men In The Moon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: to be slewed two inches to clear the rail; and that's why I grabbed
that rope's end. Who'd have thought that a sailor--even a Sicilian
lubber on a banana coaster--would have fastened a line in a bow-knot?
Don't think I'm trying to dodge the responsibility, Captain. It's my
luck.'
"'There are men, Kearny,' said I gravely, 'who pass through life
blaming upon luck and chance the mistakes that result from their own
faults and incompetency. I do not say that you are such a man. But if
all your mishaps are traceable to that tiny star, the sooner we endow
our colleges with chairs of moral astronomy, the better.'
"'It isn't the size of the star that counts,' said Kearny; 'it's the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: persuaded - "Yes," said he, "I am very much obliged to you; you
have done me a service; it would have been a theft." There are
many (not Catholics merely) who require their heroes and saints to
be infallible; to these the story will be painful; not to the true
lovers, patrons, and servants of mankind.
And I take it, this is a type of our division; that you are one of
those who have an eye for faults and failures; that you take a
pleasure to find and publish them; and that, having found them, you
make haste to forget the overvailing virtues and the real success
which had alone introduced them to your knowledge. It is a
dangerous frame of mind. That you may understand how dangerous,
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