| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: a big heap of all that rubbish in one corner of the room.
He came out quickly, slammed the door after him, turned the key,
and, taking it out, ran to the front rail of the verandah, and,
with a great swing of his arm, sent the key whizzing into the
river. This done he went back slowly to the table, called the
monkey down, unhooked its chain, and induced it to remain quiet
in the breast of his jacket. Then he sat again on the table and
looked fixedly at the door of the room he had just left. He
listened also intently. He heard a dry sound of rustling; sharp
cracks as of dry wood snapping; a whirr like of a bird's wings
when it rises suddenly, and then he saw a thin stream of smoke
Almayer's Folly |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: by rescuing it from the frail hold of carnal and temporal
into the firmer grasp of ghostly and spiritual possessors.
But the earl, confident in the number and attachment of
his retainers, stoutly refused either to repay the money,
which he could not, or to yield the forfeiture, which he would not:
a refusal which in those days was an act of outlawry in a gentleman,
as it is now of bankruptcy in a base mechanic; the gentleman
having in our wiser times a more liberal privilege of gentility,
which enables him to keep his land and laugh at his creditor.
Thus the mutual resentments and interests of the king and the abbot
concurred to subject the earl to the penalties of outlawry,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: they stowed away in unused workrooms and storerooms, and in the car
sheds, crowded so closely together that the cots touched. In
some places they would use the same room for eating and sleeping,
and at night the men would put their cots upon the tables, to
keep away from the swarms of rats.
But with all their best efforts, the packers were demoralized.
Ninety per cent of the men had walked out; and they faced the
task of completely remaking their labor force--and with the price
of meat up thirty per cent, and the public clamoring for a
settlement. They made an offer to submit the whole question at
issue to arbitration; and at the end of ten days the unions
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