The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: the other man all of a sudden. . .
"A sea strikes the stern, the ship trembles and groans all round
them, there's the noise of the seas about and overhead, confusing
Cloete, and he hears the other screaming as if crazy. . . Ah, you
don't believe me! Go and look at the port chain. Parted? Eh? Go
and see if it's parted. Go and find the broken link. You can't.
There's no broken link. That means a thousand pounds for me. No
less. A thousand the day after we get ashore - prompt. I won't
wait till she breaks up, Mr. Cloete. To the underwriters I go if
I've to walk to London on my bare feet. Port cable! Look at her
port cable, I will say to them. I doctored it - for the owners -
 Within the Tides |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: the writer understood) of a purely narrative character; and
besides, said he, "I am bound not to open them before the
year 1889." You may fancy if these words struck me: I
instituted a hunt through all the M'Brair repositories; and
at last hit upon that packet which (if you have had enough
wine) I propose to show you at once.'
In the smoking-room, to which my host now led me, was a
packet, fastened with many seals and enclosed in a single
sheet of strong paper thus endorsed:-
Papers relating to the lives and lamentable deaths of the
late Lord Durisdeer, and his elder brother James, commonly
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: She understood that he had become a monk in order to be above
those who considered themselves his superiors. And she understood
him correctly. By becoming a monk he showed contempt for all
that seemed most important to others and had seemed so to him
while he was in the service, and he now ascended a height from
which he could look down on those he had formerly envied. . . .
But it was not this alone, as his sister Varvara supposed, that
influenced him. There was also in him something else--a sincere
religious feeling which Varvara did not know, which intertwined
itself with the feeling of pride and the desire for pre-eminence,
and guided him. His disillusionment with Mary, whom he had
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