| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: above an hour in the place, happily employed in visiting an
opposite milliner, watching the sentinel on guard, and dressing a
salad and cucumber.
After welcoming their sisters, they triumphantly displayed a table
set out with such cold meat as an inn larder usually affords,
exclaiming, "Is not this nice? Is not this an agreeable surprise?"
"And we mean to treat you all," added Lydia, "but you must
lend us the money, for we have just spent ours at the shop out
there." Then, showing her purchases-- "Look here, I have
bought this bonnet. I do not think it is very pretty; but I thought
I might as well buy it as not. I shall pull it to pieces as soon as I
Pride and Prejudice |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: trifles, and of what use were birth and fortune if
they would not admit some sallies and expenses?"
His mamma was so much provoked by the cost of
this prank, that she would neither palliate nor
conceal it; and his father, after some threats of
rustication which his fondness would not suffer him to
execute, reduce the allowance of his pocket, that
he might not be tempted by plenty to profusion.
This method would have succeeded in a place
where there are no panders to folly and
extravagance, but was now likely to have produced
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: I mention this because it has some bearing on what is to follow.
But what I felt most was my being a stranger to the ship;
and if all the truth must be told, I was somewhat of a stranger
to myself. The youngest man on board (barring the second mate),
and untried as yet by a position of the fullest responsibility,
I was willing to take the adequacy of the others for granted.
They had simply to be equal to their tasks; but I wondered
how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception
of one's own personality every man sets up for himself secretly.
Meantime the chief mate, with an almost visible effect of collaboration
on the part of his round eyes and frightful whiskers, was trying to evolve
The Secret Sharer |
