| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: small house on the outskirts of the town of T----. That
afternoon, instead of going out to play in the large yard which
we shared with our landlord, I had lingered in the room in which
my father generally wrote. What emboldened me to clamber into
his chair I am sure I don't know, but a couple of hours afterward
he discovered me kneeling in it with my elbows on the table and
my head held in both hands over the MS. of loose pages. I was
greatly confused, expecting to get into trouble. He stood in the
doorway looking at me with some surprise, but the only thing he
said after a moment of silence was:
"Read the page aloud."
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: grown less springy of step, heavier in body, less
keen of eye. Imagination, no doubt; but it seems
to me now as if the net of fate had been drawn
closer round him already.
"One day I met him on the footpath over the
Talfourd Hill. He told me that 'women were fun-
ny.' I had heard already of domestic differences.
People were saying that Amy Foster was begin-
ning to find out what sort of man she had married.
He looked upon the sea with indifferent, unseeing
eyes. His wife had snatched the child out of his
Amy Foster |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis: at his toes was a preacher with a red-hot pitchfork
a-jabbing at him, they could jab till the hull here-
after turned into snow afore he'd ever sign nothing a
man like Mr. Cartwright give him to sign. Hank
was stubborner than any mule he ever nailed shoes
onto, and proud of being that stubborn. That
town was a awful religious town, and Hank he
knowed he was called the most onreligious man in it,
and he was proud of that too; and if any one called
him a heathen it jest plumb tickled him all over.
"Brother Walters," says that preacher, "we are
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