| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: strong and massive bats or stanchions of iron. These bats,
for the fixture of the principal and diagonal beams and
bracing chains, required fifty-four holes, each measuring two
inches in diameter and eighteen inches in depth. There had
already been so considerable a progress made in boring and
excavating the holes that the writer's hopes of getting the
beacon erected this year began to be more and more confirmed,
although it was now advancing towards what was considered the
latter end of the proper working season at the Bell Rock. The
foreman joiner, Mr. Francis Watt, was accordingly appointed to
attend at the rock to-day, when the necessary levels were
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: for him till in that shock it ceased like a dropped watch. Neither
did he know with how large a confidence he had counted on the final
service that had now failed: the mortal deception was that in this
abandonment the whole future gave way.
These days of her absence proved to him of what she was capable;
all the more that he never dreamed she was vindictive or even
resentful. It was not in anger she had forsaken him; it was in
simple submission to hard reality, to the stern logic of life.
This came home to him when he sat with her again in the room in
which her late aunt's conversation lingered like the tone of a
cracked piano. She tried to make him forget how much they were
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: `But he had no goods to trade with by that time,' I objected.
`There's a good lot of cartridges left even yet,'
he answered, looking away. `To speak plainly, he raided
the country,' I said. He nodded. `Not alone, surely!'
He muttered something about the villages round that lake.
`Kurtz got the tribe to follow him, did he?' I suggested.
He fidgeted a little. `They adored him,' he said. The tone of
these words was so extraordinary that I looked at him searchingly.
It was curious to see his mingled eagerness and reluctance to
speak of Kurtz. The man filled his life, occupied his thoughts,
swayed his emotions. `What can you expect?' he burst out;
Heart of Darkness |
