| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: "Goodness only knows when, though, but certainly after dark.
I'll edge her in to half a mile, as far as I may be able to judge
in the dark--"
"Be careful," he murmured, warningly--and I realized suddenly
that all my future, the only future for which I was fit,
would perhaps go irretrievably to pieces in any mishap
to my first command.
I could not stop a moment longer in the room. I motioned him to get out
of sight and made my way on the poop. That unplayful cub had the watch.
I walked up and down for a while thinking things out, then beckoned him over.
"Send a couple of hands to open the two quarter-deck ports,"
The Secret Sharer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: befallen many scores of times. Where Utterson was liked, he was
liked well. Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the
light-hearted and loose-tongued had already their foot on the
threshold; they liked to sit a while in his unobtrusive company,
practising for solitude, sobering their minds in the man's rich
silence after the expense and strain of gaiety. To this rule, Dr.
Jekyll was no exception; and as he now sat on the opposite side of
the fire--a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with
something of a stylish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity
and kindness--you could see by his looks that he cherished for
Mr. Utterson a sincere and warm affection.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: is preoccupied with the labour of mere progression, and goes with a
bowed head heavily and unobservantly forward. Reason, however, will
not carry us the whole way; for the sentiment often recurs in
situations where it is very hard to imagine any possible explanation;
and indeed, if we drive briskly along a good, well-made road in an
open vehicle, we shall experience this sympathy almost at its
fullest. We feel the sharp settle of the springs at some curiously
twisted corner; after a steep ascent, the fresh air dances in our
faces as we rattle precipitately down the other side, and we find it
difficult to avoid attributing something headlong, a sort of ABANDON,
to the road itself.
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