| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: "Why, you said so yourself, last night, senor, about the taking of
Cartagena."
The commandant blushed, and stammered out somewhat--"That it was
excusable in him, if he had said, in jest, that so prodigious and
curious a valor had not sprung from mortal source."
"No more it did, senor," said Jack Brimblecombe, stoutly: "but from
Him who taught our 'hands to war, and our fingers to fight.'"
The commandant bowed stiffly. "You will excuse me, sir preacher:
but I am a Catholic, and hold the cause of my king to be alone the
cause of Heaven. But, senor captain, how came you thither, if I
may ask? That you needed no art-magic after you came on board, I,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: and an inexhaustible patience in listening to their
tales.
One day, as we trotted out of a large village into
a shady bit of road, I saw on our left hand a low,
black cottage, with diamond panes in the windows,
a creeper on the end wall, a roof of shingle, and
some roses climbing on the rickety trellis-work of
the tiny porch. Kennedy pulled up to a walk. A
woman, in full sunlight, was throwing a dripping
blanket over a line stretched between two old ap-
ple-trees. And as the bobtailed, long-necked chest-
Amy Foster |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: of darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for
his soul with the devil; the fool is too much of a fool,
or the devil too much of a devil--I don't know which.
Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether
deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds.
Then the earth for you is only a standing place--and whether
to be like this is your loss or your gain I won't pretend to say.
But most of us are neither one nor the other. The earth for us
is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights,
with sounds, with smells, too, by Jove!--breathe dead hippo,
so to speak, and not be contaminated. And there, don't you see?
Heart of Darkness |
