| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: scarce begun, and not at all come down to that part of the city where
they usually press for seamen; and though a war with the Dutch was
not at all grateful to the people at that time, and the seamen went with
a kind of reluctancy into the service, and many complained of being
dragged into it by force, yet it proved in the event a happy violence to
several of them, who had probably perished in the general calamity,
and who, after the summer service was over, though they had cause to
lament the desolation of their families - who, when they came back,
were many of them in their graves - yet they had room to be thankful
that they were carried out of the reach of it, though so much against
their wills. We indeed had a hot war with the Dutch that year, and
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: with the soldier that "the weather has been routed," or, as the
peasant would say, "the sky glowered like an executioner." Suddenly a
wind arose from the quarter of the sunset, and the skipper, who never
took his eyes off the sea, saw the swell on the horizon line, and
cried:
"Stop rowing!"
The sailors stopped immediately, and let their oars lie on the water.
"The skipper is right," said Thomas coolly. A great wave caught up the
boat, carried it high on its crest, only to plunge it, as it were,
into the trough of the sea that seemed to yawn for them. At this
mighty upheaval, this sudden outbreak of the wrath of the sea, the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: in the saloon listening outside the door of the cap-
tain's state-room.
One afternoon in perfect desperation he burst
into that room and made such a scene, tearing his
hair and shouting such horrid imprecations that he
cowed the contemptuous spirit of the sick man.
The water-tanks were low, they had not gained fifty
miles in a fortnight. She would never reach Hong-
Kong.
It was like fighting desperately toward destruc-
tion for the ship and the men. This was evident
The Shadow Line |
