| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: garden door.
To this day I don't know what made me call
after him. "I say! Wait a minute." Perhaps
it was the sidelong glance he gave me; or possibly
I was yet under the influence of Captain Giles'
mysterious earnestness. Well, it was an impulse
of some sort; an effect of that force somewhere
within our lives which shapes them this way or
that. For if these words had not escaped from my
lips (my will had nothing to do with that) my
existence would, to be sure, have been still a sea-
The Shadow Line |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: received? May I not still hope and trust? I did hope and trust
for a while: but, alas, alas! the time ebbed away: one week
followed another, and, excepting one distant glimpse and two
transient meetings - during which scarcely anything was said -
while I was walking with Miss Matilda, I saw nothing of him:
except, of course, at church.
And now, the last Sunday was come, and the last service. I was
often on the point of melting into tears during the sermon - the
last I was to hear from him: the best I should hear from anyone, I
was well assured. It was over - the congregation were departing;
and I must follow. I had then seen him, and heard his voice, too,
Agnes Grey |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: I resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged
over the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over,
and I was flung headlong through the air.
`There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may
have been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing
round me, and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset
machine. Everything still seemed grey, but presently I remarked
that the confusion in my ears was gone. I looked round me. I was
on what seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by
rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and purple
blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating of the
The Time Machine |
