| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: without enthusiasm, in a perfunctory, grumpy worry, in the "Where
the devil IS the beastly thing gone to?" ungracious spirit.
Where, indeed! It might have been reposing behind the sofa for a
day or so. My landlady's anemic daughter (as Ollendorff would
have expressed it), though commendably neat, had a lordly,
careless manner of approaching her domestic duties. Or it might
even be resting delicately poised on its point by the side of the
table-leg, and when picked up show a gaping, inefficient beak
which would have discouraged any man of literary instincts. But
not me! "Never mind. This will do."
O days without guile! If anybody had told me then that a devoted
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles: But to the parents who begat thee, wise.
OEDIPUS
What sayest thou--"parents"? Who begat me, speak?
TEIRESIAS
This day shall be thy birth-day, and thy grave.
OEDIPUS
Thou lov'st to speak in riddles and dark words.
TEIRESIAS
In reading riddles who so skilled as thou?
OEDIPUS
Twit me with that wherein my greatness lies.
Oedipus Trilogy |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mayflower Compact: as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the
Generall Good of the Colonie; unto which we promise
all due Submission and Obedience.
In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names
at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Raigne of our
Sovereigne Lord, King James of England, France, and Ireland,
the eighteenth, and of Scotland, the fiftie-fourth,
Anno. Domini, 1620.
Mr. John Carver Mr. Stephen Hopkins
Mr. William Bradford Digery Priest
Mr. Edward Winslow Thomas Williams
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