| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: ridiculous manner."
Mr. Van Wyk turned on his heel. The other three
whites on the bridge had not stirred during the scene.
Massy walked hastily from side to side, puffed out his
cheeks, suffocated.
"Stuck up Dutchman!"
And he moaned out feverishly a long tale of griefs.
The efforts he had made for all these years to please
that man. This was the return you got for it, eh?
Pretty. Write to Schnitzler--let in the green-funnel
boats--get an old Hamburg Jew to ruin him. No,
End of the Tether |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: "Heaven forbid I should take you for anything so dreadful! You
came down to perform a little act of sympathy, and so, I may
confide to you, did I. Let us perform our little act together.
These pages overflow with the testimony we want: let us read them
and taste them and interpret them. You'll of course have perceived
for yourself that one scarcely does read Neil Paraday till one
reads him aloud; he gives out to the ear an extraordinary full
tone, and it's only when you expose it confidently to that test
that you really get near his style. Take up your book again and
let me listen, while you pay it out, to that wonderful fifteenth
chapter. If you feel you can't do it justice, compose yourself to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: fell into further discourse, in which, to my alarm and amazement,
he spoke of the villainous doings of a certain pirate ship that had
long been the talk of mariners in those seas; no other, in a word,
than the very ship he was now on board of, and which we had so
unluckily purchased. I presently saw there was no help for it but
to tell him the plain truth, and explain all the danger and trouble
we had suffered through this misadventure, and, in particular, our
earnest wish to be speedily quit of the ship altogether; for which
reason we had resolved to carry her up to Nankin.
The old man was amazed at this relation, and told us we were in the
right to go away to the north; and that, if he might advise us, it
Robinson Crusoe |
