| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: was what the wearer of this garment had really come in for. She
had come in for Everard--and that was doubtless not his true name
either. If our young lady had never taken such jumps before it was
simply that she had never before been so affected. She went all
the way. Mary and Cissy had been round together, in their single
superb person, to see him--he must live round the corner; they had
found that, in consequence of something they had come, precisely,
to make up for or to have another scene about, he had gone off--
gone off just on purpose to make them feel it; on which they had
come together to Cocker's as to the nearest place; where they had
put in the three forms partly in order not to put in the one alone.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: of a dungeon, that sense of a horrible and degrading misfortune
overtaking a creature fair to see and safe to trust, attaches only
to ships moored in the docks of great European ports. You feel
that they are dishonestly locked up, to be hunted about from wharf
to wharf on a dark, greasy, square pool of black water as a brutal
reward at the end of a faithful voyage.
A ship anchored in an open roadstead, with cargo-lighters alongside
and her own tackle swinging the burden over the rail, is
accomplishing in freedom a function of her life. There is no
restraint; there is space: clear water around her, and a clear sky
above her mastheads, with a landscape of green hills and charming
The Mirror of the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: swing, and I had need of my immediate attention for Miss Anvoy.
Even when I was told afterwards that he had, as we might have said
to-day, broken the record, the manner in which that attention had
been rewarded relieved me of a sense of loss. I had of course a
perfect general consciousness that something great was going on:
it was a little like having been etherised to hear Herr Joachim
play. The old music was in the air; I felt the strong pulse of
thought, the sink and swell, the flight, the poise, the plunge; but
I knew something about one of the listeners that nobody else knew,
and Saltram's monologue could reach me only through that medium.
To this hour I'm of no use when, as a witness, I'm appealed to--for
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