| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: did not stand being looked into. Practical and subtle in her way,
she brought Stevie to the front without loss of time, because in
her the singleness of purpose had the unerring nature and the force
of an instinct.
"What I am going to do to cheer up that boy for the first few days
I'm sure I don't know. He'll be worrying himself from morning till
night before he gets used to mother being away. And he's such a
good boy. I couldn't do without him."
Mr Verloc went on divesting himself of his clothing with the
unnoticing inward concentration of a man undressing in the solitude
of a vast and hopeless desert. For thus inhospitably did this fair
The Secret Agent |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: absurd to waste an expensive frame. There was no good in beating about the
bush. Anna looked like a stranger--abnormal, a freak--it might be a
picture taken just before or after death.
Suddenly he realised that the wind had dropped, that the whole house was
still, terribly still. Cold and pale, with a disgusting feeling that
spiders were creeping up his spine and across his face, he stood in the
centre of the drawing-room, hearing Doctor Erb's footsteps descending the
stairs.
He saw Doctor Erb come into the room; the room seemed to change into a
great glass bowl that spun round, and Doctor Erb seemed to swim through
this glass bowl towards him, like a goldfish in a pearl-coloured waistcoat.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: another name, take up the story.
CHAPTER I
THE BOY CHAKA PROPHESIES
You ask me, my father, to tell you the tale of the youth of
Umslopogaas, holder of the iron Chieftainess, the axe Groan-maker, who
was named Bulalio the Slaughterer, and of his love for Nada, the most
beautiful of Zulu women. It is long; but you are here for many nights,
and, if I live to tell it, it shall be told. Strengthen your heart, my
father, for I have much to say that is sorrowful, and even now, when I
think of Nada the tears creep through the horn that shuts out my old
eyes from light.
Nada the Lily |
