| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: excursions to Luna's, their afternoons spent in the golden Chinese
balcony, their mornings on the lake, calm and still and hot.
Forever and forever they had said good-by to that life. Already
the sunset was losing its glory.
Then, with one last look, they turned about and set their faces
from it to the new life, to the East, where lay the Nation. Out
beyond the purple bulwarks of the Sierras, far off, the great,
grim world went clashing through its grooves--the world that now
they were to know, the world that called to them, and woke them,
and roused them. Their little gayeties were done; the life of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional
grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and
easy method of making these children sound and useful members of
the common-wealth, would deserve so well of the publick, as to
have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.
But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only
for the children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater
extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a
certain age, who are born of parents in effect as little able to
support them, as those who demand our charity in the streets.
As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years, upon
A Modest Proposal |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: "Alice!"
Nothing answered me, not even a stir behind the door. Jacobus's
house might have been made empty for me to make myself at home in.
I did not call again. I had become aware of a great
discouragement. I was mentally jaded, morally dejected. I turned
to the garden again, sitting down with my elbows spread on the low
balustrade, and took my head in my hands.
The evening closed upon me. The shadows lengthened, deepened,
mingled together into a pool of twilight in which the flower-beds
glowed like coloured embers; whiffs of heavy scent came to me as if
the dusk of this hemisphere were but the dimness of a temple and
'Twixt Land & Sea |
