The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: Falk went on, that such an experience changed a
man for the rest of his life. He couldn't say. It
was hard, awful, and not to be forgotten, but he
did not think himself a worse man than before.
Only he talked in his sleep now, he believed. . . .
At last I began to think he had accidentally killed
some one; perhaps a friend--his own father may-
be; when he went on to say that probably we were
aware he never touched meat. Throughout he
spoke English, of course of my account.
He swayed forward heavily.
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'Hey!' he cried. 'At last!'
The Countess stepped into the room in silence, threw herself on a
chair, and crossed her legs. In her lace and velvet, with a good
display of smooth black stocking and of snowy petticoat, and with
the refined profile of her face and slender plumpness of her body,
she showed in singular contrast to the big, black, intellectual
satyr by the fire.
'How often do you send for me?' she cried. 'It is compromising.'
Gondremark laughed. 'Speaking of that,' said he, 'what in the
devil's name were you about? You were not home till morning.'
'I was giving alms,' she said.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: since d'Esquerre first came into the house she had been haunted
by an imploring little girlish ghost that followed her about,
wringing its hands and entreating for an hour of life.
The storm had held off unconscionably long; the air within
the lodge was stifling, and without the garden waited,
breathless. Everything seemed pervaded by a poignant distress;
the hush of feverish, intolerable expectation. The still earth,
the heavy flowers, even the growing darkness, breathed the
exhaustion of protracted waiting. Caroline felt that she ought
to go; that it was wrong to stay; that the hour and the place
were as treacherous as her own reflections. She rose and began
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |