| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: reputation, and have been long enough alone with a sedooctive youth.
And come back another day for your saxpence!" she cried after me as I
left.
My skirmish with this disconcerting lady gave my thoughts a boldness
they had otherwise wanted. For two days the image of Catriona had
mixed in all my meditations; she made their background, so that I
scarce enjoyed my own company without a glint of her in a corner of my
mind. But now she came immediately near; I seemed to touch her, whom I
had never touched but the once; I let myself flow out to her in a happy
weakness, and looking all about, and before and behind, saw the world
like an undesirable desert, where men go as soldiers on a march,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: severity and contempt. This idea, of injustice somewhat poisoned
the pleasure I might otherwise have derived from Pelet's soft
affable manner to myself. Certainly it was agreeable, when the
day's work was over, to find one's employer an intelligent and
cheerful companion; and if he was sometimes a little sarcastic
and sometimes a little too insinuating, and if I did discover
that his mildness was more a matter of appearance than of
reality--if I did occasionally suspect the existence of flint or
steel under an external covering of velvet--still we are none of
us perfect; and weary as I was of the atmosphere of brutality and
insolence in which I had constantly lived at X----, I had no
The Professor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: went out to let me eat it, and left the door unlocked.
And I ate it--all there was, too. After I had finished I strolled
out on the quarter-deck. I don't know that I meant to do anything.
A breath of fresh air was all I wanted, I believe.
Then a sudden temptation came over me. I kicked off my slippers
and was in the water before I had made up my mind fairly.
Somebody heard the splash and they raised an awful hullabaloo.
`He's gone! Lower the boats! He's committed suicide!
No, he's swimming.' Certainly I was swimming. It's not
so easy for a swimmer like me to commit suicide by drowning.
I landed on the nearest islet before the boat left the ship's side.
The Secret Sharer |
