| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: never made any friends. The only relations were the atrocious East-
end cousins. We know what they were. Nothing but wretchedness,
whichever way she turned in an unjust and prejudiced world. And to
look at him helplessly she felt would be too much for her.
I won't say I was thinking these thoughts. It was not necessary.
This complete knowledge was in my head while I stared hard across
the wide road, so hard that I failed to hear little Fyne till he
raised his deep voice indignantly.
"I don't blame the girl," he was saying. "He is infatuated with
her. Anybody can see that. Why she should have got such a hold on
him I can't understand. She said "Yes" to him only for the sake of
Chance |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: perfection, a good man should forfeit the tribute even of imperfect
praise.
As touching, therefore, the excellency of his birth, what weightier,
what nobler testimony can be adduced than this one fact? To the
commemorative list of famous ancestry is added to-day the name[1]
Agesilaus as holding this or that numerical descent from Heracles, and
these ancestors no private persons, but kings sprung from the loins of
kings. Nor is it open to the gainsayer to contend that they were kings
indeed but of some chance city. Not so, but even as their family holds
highest honour in their fatherland, so too is their city the most
glorious in Hellas, whereby they hold, not primacy over the second
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: fishing. It was an even pool with steep banks, and the water ran
through it very straight and swift, some four feet deep and thirty
yards across. As the tail-fly reached the middle of the water, a
fine trout literally turned a somersault over it, but without
touching it. At the next cast he was ready, taking it with a rush
that carried him into the air with the fly in his mouth. He
weighed three-quarters of a pound. The next one was equally eager
in rising and sharp in playing, and the third might have been his
twin sister or brother. So, after casting for hours and taking
nothing in the most beautiful pools, I landed three trout from one
unlikely place in fifteen minutes. That was because the trout's
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