| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: "But what is it all about?" said Mademoiselle Goujet.
"A matter of life and death; you must know that," replied Corentin.
Madame d'Hauteserre fainted. To Mademoiselle Goujet's great
astonishment and Corentin's disappointment, Laurence's room was empty.
Certain that no one could have escaped from the park or the chateau,
for all the issues were guarded, Corentin stationed a gendarme in
every room and ordered others to search the farm buildings, stables,
and sheds. Then he returned to the salon, where Durieu and his wife
and the other servants had rushed in the wildest excitement. Peyrade
was studying their faces with his little blue eye, cold and calm in
the midst of the uproar. Just as Corentin reappeared alone
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: fighting-shields, their gleaming spears, their otter-skin caps, their
kilts and armlets of white bulls' tails, and the snowy egret plumes
which they wore upon their brows. We rode to the head of them, where I
saw Maputa, and as I came they greeted me with a cheer of welcome, for
in those days a white man was a power in the land. Moreover, as I have
said, the Zulus knew and liked me well. Also the fact that I was to
watch, or perchance to fight with them, put a good heart into the
Amawombe.
There we stood until the lads, several hundreds of them, who bore the
mats and cooking vessels and drove the cattle that were to be our
commissariat, had wended away in a long line. Then suddenly Panda
Child of Storm |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: persistent, unnoticed. The cowled grandfather was very much
entertained somewhere within his hood.
He had not joined in the shouting of jokes, neither had he moved
the least bit. He had remained quietly in his place against the
foot of the mast. I had been given to understand long before
that he had the rating of a second-class able seaman (matelot
leger) in the fleet which sailed from Toulon for the conquest of
Algeria in the year of grace 1830. And, indeed, I had seen and
examined one of the buttons of his old brown, patched coat, the
only brass button of the miscellaneous lot, flat and thin, with
the words Equipages de ligne engraved on it. That sort of
A Personal Record |
