| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: came out with his friend, came downstairs, took his arm,
affectionately, as to help and guide him, treating him if not
exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a noble eccentric who appealed
to tenderness, and keeping on with him, while they walked, to the
next corner and the next. "You needn't tell me, you needn't tell
me!"--this again as they proceeded, he wished to make Strether
feel. What he needn't tell him was now at last, in the geniality
of separation, anything at all it concerned him to know. He knew,
up to the hilt--that really came over Chad; he understood, felt,
recorded his vow; and they lingered on it as they had lingered in
their walk to Strether's hotel the night of their first meeting.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: hills, purple and arid, stood out heavily on the sky: their summits
seemed to fade into a coloured tremble as of ascending vapour; their
steep sides were streaked with the green of narrow ravines; at their
foot lay rice-fields, plantain-patches, yellow sands. A torrent wound
about like a dropped thread. Clumps of fruit-trees marked the
villages; slim palms put their nodding heads together above the low
houses; dried palm-leaf roofs shone afar, like roofs of gold, behind
the dark colonnades of tree-trunks; figures passed vivid and
vanishing; the smoke of fires stood upright above the masses of
flowering bushes; bamboo fences glittered, running away in broken
lines between the fields. A sudden cry on the shore sounded plaintive
Tales of Unrest |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: smile away Dr. Stell's allusion.
"You think, then, it's a case of brain-fag--nothing more?"
"Nothing more. And I should advise you to knock off tobacco.
You smoke a good deal, don't you?"
He developed his treatment, recommending massage, gymnastics,
travel, or any form of diversion that did not--that in short--
Granice interrupted him impatiently. "Oh, I loathe all that--and
I'm sick of travelling."
"H'm. Then some larger interest--politics, reform, philanthropy?
Something to take you out of yourself."
"Yes. I understand," said Granice wearily.
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