| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together . . .'
He began to write again. The sick man was too ill to groan.
The flies buzzed in a great peace.
"Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great
tramping of feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble
of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side of the planks.
All the carriers were speaking together, and in the midst
of the uproar the lamentable voice of the chief agent was heard
`giving it up' tearfully for the twentieth time that day.
. . . He rose slowly. `What a frightful row,' he said.
He crossed the room gently to look at the sick man,
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: ain't."
The axes crashed through the as yet unprotected
door. A blaze of light from within poured through
the smashed panels. The door fell, and the raiders
rang into the room with their guns handy.
The big room was furnished with the gaudy mag-
nificence dear to Denver Dick's western ideas. Vari-
ous well-patronized games were in progress. About
fifty men who were in the room rushed upon the police
in a grand break for personal liberty. The plain-
clothes men had to do a little club-swinging. More
The Voice of the City |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: light literature in which the passions have a holiday, and when the
author's invention fails, a grand catastrophe clears the stage of one
half the dramatis personae, leaving the other half to exult over
their downfall.
"Prime, isn't it?" asked the boy, as her eye went down the last
paragraph of her portion.
"I think you and I could do as well as that if we tried,"
returned Jo, amused at his admiration of the trash.
"I should think I was a pretty lucky chap if I could. She makes
a good living out of such stories, they say." And he pointed to the
name of Mrs. S.L.A.N.G. Northbury, under the title of the tale.
Little Women |
