| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: in the impeccable joint, marked the mouth of the river Meinam
we had just left on the first preparatory stage of our
homeward journey; and, far back on the inland level, a larger
and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the great Paknam pagoda,
was the only thing on which the eye could rest from the vain
task of exploring the monotonous sweep of the horizon.
Here and there gleams as of a few scattered pieces of silver marked
the windings of the great river; and on the nearest of them,
just within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land became
lost to my sight, hull and funnel and masts, as though the impassive
earth had swallowed her up without an effort, without a tremor.
The Secret Sharer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: revered friend, William Lloyd Garrison, as I stepped upon the
platform. I could not always obey, for I was now reading and
thinking. New views of the subject were presented to my mind.
It did not entirely satisfy me to _narrate_ wrongs; I felt like
_denouncing_ them. I could not always curb my moral indignation
<282>for the perpetrators of slaveholding villainy, long enough
for a circumstantial statement of the facts which I felt almost
everybody must know. Besides, I was growing, and needed room.
"People won't believe you ever was a slave, Frederick, if you
keep on this way," said Friend Foster. "Be yourself," said
Collins, "and tell your story." It was said to me, "Better have
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: "/Addio, addio!/" she said, with the sweetest inflection of her young
voice.
She added to the last syllable a wonderfully executed trill, in a very
low tone, as if to depict the overflowing affection of her heart by a
poetic expression. The old man, suddenly arrested by some memory,
remained on the threshold of that secret retreat. In the profound
silence we heard the sigh that came forth form his breast; he removed
the most beautiful of the rings with which his skeleton fingers were
laden, and placed it in Marianina's bosom. The young madcap laughed,
plucked out the ring, slipped it on one of her fingers over her glove,
and ran hastily back toward the salon, where the orchestra were, at
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