| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: the west, shows a curved and ridged outline resembling the
backbone of a stooping giant. And to the eastward a troop of
insignificant islets stand effaced, indistinct, with vague
features that seem to melt into the gathering shadows. The night
following from the eastward the retreat of the setting sun
advanced slowly, swallowing the land and the sea; the land
broken, tormented and abrupt; the sea smooth and inviting with
its easy polish of continuous surface to wanderings facile and
endless.
There was no wind, and a small brig that had lain all the
afternoon a few miles to the northward and westward of Carimata
The Rescue |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde: too polite to make any personal remarks out loud.
"Far away," continued the statue in a low musical voice, "far away
in a little street there is a poor house. One of the windows is
open, and through it I can see a woman seated at a table. Her face
is thin and worn, and she has coarse, red hands, all pricked by the
needle, for she is a seamstress. She is embroidering passion-
flowers on a satin gown for the loveliest of the Queen's maids-of-
honour to wear at the next Court-ball. In a bed in the corner of
the room her little boy is lying ill. He has a fever, and is
asking for oranges. His mother has nothing to give him but river
water, so he is crying. Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow, will you
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: harbors of the Levant. Careful to be always well supplied with the products
in most general demand--coffee, sugar, rice, tobacco, cotton stuffs,
and gunpowder--and being at all times ready to barter, and prepared to deal
in sec-ondhand wares, he had contrived to amass considerable wealth.
On the eventful night of the 1st of January the _Hansa_ had been at Ceuta,
the point on the coast of Morocco exactly opposite Gibraltar. The mate
and three sailors had all gone on shore, and, in common with many of their
fellow-creatures, had entirely disappeared; but the most projecting rock
of Ceuta had been undisturbed by the general catastrophe, and half a score
of Spaniards, who had happened to be upon it, had escaped with their lives.
They were all Andalusian majos, agricultural laborers, and naturally
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