| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: didn't know why they disliked him so. It made
everything most difficult.
I listened impassive, feeling more and more dip-
lomatic. His speech was not transparently clear.
He was one of those men who seem to live, feel,
suffer in a sort of mental twilight. But as to being
fascinated by the girl and possessed by the desire
of home life with her--it was as clear as daylight.
So much being at stake, he was afraid of putting
it to the hazard of declaration. Besides, there
was something else. And with Hermann being so
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: imparted it by signs to Jonathan--and Jonathan by tokens to the cook as she
was basting a loin of mutton; the cook sold it with some kitchen-fat to the
postillion for a groat, who truck'd it with the dairy maid for something of
about the same value--and though whisper'd in the hay-loft, Fame caught the
notes with her brazen trumpet, and sounded them upon the house-top--In a
word, not an old woman in the village or five miles round, who did not
understand the difficulties of my uncle Toby's siege, and what were the
secret articles which had delayed the surrender.--
My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis,
by which means never man crucified Truth at the rate he did--had but just
heard of the report as my uncle Toby set out; and catching fire suddenly at
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: and, when the sun set he lay down to sleep on a bed of leaves, and
the birds and the animals fled from him, for they remembered his
cruelty, and he was alone save for the toad that watched him, and
the slow adder that crawled past.
And in the morning he rose up, and plucked some bitter berries from
the trees and ate them, and took his way through the great wood,
weeping sorely. And of everything that he met he made inquiry if
perchance they had seen his mother.
He said to the Mole, 'Thou canst go beneath the earth. Tell me, is
my mother there?'
And the Mole answered, 'Thou hast blinded mine eyes. How should I
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