| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: but those of memory and expectation. He ached with a sense
of his absence from Mrs. Vivian's deeply familiar sky-parlor,
which seemed to him for the time the most sacred spot on earth--
if on earth it could be called--and he consigned to those generous
postal receptacles which ornament with their brilliant hue
the London street-corners, an inordinate number of the most
voluminous epistles that had ever been dropped into them.
He took long walks, alone, and thought all the way of Angela,
to whom, it seemed to him, that the character of ministering
angel was extremely becoming. She was faithful to her promise
of writing to him every day, and she was an angel who wielded--
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: impressive; and as her husband stood before her, with his hands crossed
behind his powerful back, that which he looked upon was the very image
of the insignificant.
"Her and me were never cut out for one another," he remarked at last.
"It was a daft-like marriage." And then, with a most unusual gentleness
of tone, "Puir bitch," said he, "puir bitch!" Then suddenly: "Where's
Erchie?"
Kirstie had decoyed him to her room and given him "a jeely-piece."
"Ye have some kind of gumption, too," observed the judge, and considered
his housekeeper grimly. "When all's said," he added, "I micht have done
waur - I micht have been marriet upon a skirting Jezebel like you!"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: a stubborn if not a steadfast operation; something of which I should have
been perfectly incapable.
"I reckoned it would be dark before we closed with the land,"
he continued, so low that I had to strain my hearing near
as we were to each other, shoulder touching shoulder almost.
"So I asked to speak to the old man. He always seemed
very sick when he came to see me--as if he could not look
me in the face. You know, that foresail saved the ship.
She was too deep to have run long under bare poles.
And it was I that managed to set it for him. Anyway, he came.
When I had him in my cabin--he stood by the door looking
The Secret Sharer |
