| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: experienced some fear, or may even,--who knows?--have
wearied of the gods. Springing upon the rail he threw
himself into sea and made off with great strokes toward the
canoe. Pedro behind him shouted ``Escape!'' There was
a rush to the side to observe. Fernando bawled, ``Come
back! or we'll let fly an arrow.
He swam, the dark, naked fellow, like a fish. Reaching
the canoe, the Indians there took him in; he seemed to have
a tale to tell, they all broke into talk, the canoe went round,
they rowed fast back to land. The _Nina_, lying near us, had
her boat filling to go ashore. Her men had seen the leap
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: The bushes shook, the grass swayed for a time, and then everything
stood still in attentive immobility.
"`Now, if he does not say the right thing to them we are all
done for,' said the Russian at my elbow. The knot of men
with the stretcher had stopped, too, halfway to the steamer,
as if petrified. I saw the man on the stretcher sit up,
lank and with an uplifted arm, above the shoulders of the bearers.
`Let us hope that the man who can talk so well of love in general
will find some particular reason to spare us this time,' I said.
I resented bitterly the absurd danger of our situation,
as if to be at the mercy of that atrocious phantom had
 Heart of Darkness |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: and perhaps to some of our towns in America.
Having been for some time employed by the postmaster-general
of America as his comptroller in regulating several offices,
and bringing the officers to account, I was, upon his death
in 1753, appointed, jointly with Mr. William Hunter, to succeed him,
by a commission from the postmaster-general in England. The American
office never had hitherto paid any thing to that of Britain.
We were to have six hundred pounds a year between us, if we could make
that sum out of the profits of the office. To do this, a variety
of improvements were necessary; some of these were inevitably at
first expensive, so that in the first four years the office became
 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |