| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: bald head set off by a bunch of black hair above each ear, and
with a long, black beard. He glanced up from the paper he was
reading and seemed genuinely astonished at our intrusion. By and
by more men came in. Not one of them looked like a tourist. Not
a single woman appeared. These men seemed to know each other
with some intimacy, but I cannot say they were a very talkative
lot. The bald-headed man sat down gravely at the head of the
table. It all had the air of a family party. By and by, from
one of the vigorous servant-girls in national costume, we
discovered that the place was really a boarding house for some
English engineers engaged at the works of the St. Gothard Tunnel;
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: again?
LYOFF TOLSTOY.
My Aunt Tánya, when she was in a bad temper because the
coffee-pot had been spilt or because she had been beaten at
croquet, was in the habit of sending every one to the devil. My
father wrote the following story, "Susóitchik," about it.
The devil, not the chief devil, but one of the rank and file,
the one charged with the management of social affairs,
Susóitchik by name, was greatly perturbed on the 6th of
August, 1884. From the early morning onward, people kept arriving
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: looked at it. When you are hungry, and very, very sore, you do not cry.
She leaned her chin on one hand, and looked, with her great dove's eyes--
the other hand was cut open, so she wrapped it in her pinafore. She looked
across the plain at the sand and the low karoo-bushes, with the moonlight
on them.
Presently, there came slowly, from far away, a wild springbuck. It came
close to the house, and stood looking at it in wonder, while the moonlight
glinted on its horns, and in its great eyes. It stood wondering at the red
brick walls, and the girl watched it. Then, suddenly, as if it scorned it
all, it curved its beautiful back and turned; and away it fled over the
bushes and sand, like a sheeny streak of white lightning. She stood up to
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