| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: this play of physiognomy steadily.
"Ah! ever since. Well! What have you got to say for yourself?" he
asked sharply.
Mr Verloc answered with some surprise that he was not aware of
having anything special to say. He had been summoned by a letter -
And he plunged his hand busily into the side pocket of his
overcoat, but before the mocking, cynical watchfulness of Mr
Vladimir, concluded to leave it there.
"Bah!" said that latter. "What do you mean by getting out of
condition like this? You haven't got even the physique of your
profession. You - a member of a starving proletariat - never! You
 The Secret Agent |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: A war of the march in the mirk midnight
And the shot from behind the tree,
The shaven head and the painted face,
The silent foot in the wood,
In a land of a strange, outlandish tongue
That was hard to be understood.
It fell about the gloaming
The general stood with his staff,
He stood and he looked east and west
With little mind to laugh.
"Far have I been and much have I seen,
 Ballads |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: influence exerted over his wife by her old confessor, placed the
question on such a footing that Madame de Granville, in a spirit of
defiance, referred it by writing to the Court of Rome, asking in so
many words whether a woman could wear low gowns and go to the play and
to balls without compromising her salvation.
The reply of the venerable Pope Pius VII. came at once, strongly
condemning the wife's recalcitrancy and blaming the priest. This
letter, a chapter on conjugal duties, might have been dictated by the
spirit of Fenelon, whose grace and tenderness pervaded every line.
"A wife is right to go wherever her husband may take her. Even if she
sins by his command, she will not be ultimately held answerable."
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