| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: a direct aid to keeping them in the dark. I trembled lest they
should see that they WERE so immensely more interesting.
Putting things at the worst, at all events, as in meditation I
so often did, any clouding of their innocence could only be--
blameless and foredoomed as they were--a reason the more for
taking risks. There were moments when, by an irresistible impulse,
I found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart.
As soon as I had done so I used to say to myself:
"What will they think of that? Doesn't it betray too much?"
It would have been easy to get into a sad, wild tangle about how
much I might betray; but the real account, I feel, of the hours
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: "Well, a certain curiosity is natural - "
"You think so. That's just it. You think every other mind wants to know. I
remember once, when I asked you why you conducted all these researches,
you said you wanted your F.R.S., and to have the stuff called Cavorite,
and things like that. You know perfectly well you didn't do it for that;
but at the time my question took you by surprise, and you felt you ought
to have something to look like a motive. Really you conducted researches
because you had to. It's your twist."
"Perhaps it is -"
"It isn't one man in a million has that twist. Most men want - well,
various things, but very few want knowledge for its own sake. I don't, I
The First Men In The Moon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: day.
The little princess went round the table with quick, short,
swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her
dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was
doing was a pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought
my work," said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all
present. "Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick
on me," she added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to
be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed."
And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed,
dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.
War and Peace |
