| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: A day or so after we had got to work upon the quap I found myself
so sleepless and miserable that the ship became unendurable.
Just before the rush of sunrise I borrowed Pollack's gun, walked
down the planks, clambered over the quap heaps and prowled along
the beach. I went perhaps a mile and a half that day and some
distance beyond the ruins of the old station. I became
interested in the desolation about me, and found when I returned
that I was able to sleep for nearly an hour. It was delightful
to have been alone for so long,--no captain, no Pollack, no one.
Accordingly I repeated this expedition the next morning and the
next until it became a custom with me. There was little for me
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: survive him long enough to be decorously accessible, I might
approach her with the feeble flicker of my plea. Did she know and
if she knew would she speak? It was much to be presumed that for
more reasons than one she would have nothing to say; but when she
passed out of all reach I felt renannouncement indeed my appointed
lot. I was shut up in my obsession for ever - my gaolers had gone
off with the key. I find myself quite as vague as a captive in a
dungeon about the tinge that further elapsed before Mrs. Corvick
became the wife of Drayton Deane. I had foreseen, through my bars,
this end of the business, though there was no indecent haste and
our friendship had fallen rather off. They were both so "awfully
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: "I should think not," said the old gentleman, eyeing Clifford
earnestly, and rather apprehensively. "I should conceive not, sir,
with that notion in your head!"
"Surely not," continued Clifford; "and it were a relief to me if
that house could be torn down, or burnt up, and so the earth be
rid of it, and grass be sown abundantly over its foundation. Not
that I should ever visit its site again! for, sir, the farther I
get away from it, the more does the joy, the lightsome freshness,
the heart-leap, the intellectual dance, the youth, in short,--yes,
my youth, my youth!--the more does it come back to me. No longer
ago than this morning, I was old. I remember looking in the glass,
House of Seven Gables |
