| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: predecessors. Everything had been done to make the iron ship
perfect, but no wit of man had managed to devise an efficient
coating composition to keep her bottom clean with the smooth
cleanness of yellow metal sheeting. After a spell of a few weeks
at sea, an iron ship begins to lag as if she had grown tired too
soon. It is only her bottom that is getting foul. A very little
affects the speed of an iron ship which is not driven on by a
merciless propeller. Often it is impossible to tell what
inconsiderate trifle puts her off her stride. A certain
mysteriousness hangs around the quality of speed as it was
displayed by the old sailing-ships commanded by a competent seaman.
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: "The Moreau Hollows"--was it? "The Moreau--" Ah! It sent my memory
back ten years. "The Moreau Horrors!" The phrase drifted loose
in my mind for a moment, and then I saw it in red lettering on a little
buff-coloured pamphlet, to read which made one shiver and creep.
Then I remembered distinctly all about it. That long-forgotten
pamphlet came back with startling vividness to my mind.
I had been a mere lad then, and Moreau was, I suppose, about fifty,--
a prominent and masterful physiologist, well-known in scientific
circles for his extraordinary imagination and his brutal directness
in discussion.
Was this the same Moreau? He had published some very astonishing
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: when you entered it with the feeling of spotless and
all-pervading cleanliness--a cleanliness that greeted you in the
shining brass door-knocker; that entertained you in the sitting
room with its stiff, leather-covered furniture, the brass-headed
tacks whereof sparkled like so many stars--a cleanliness that
bade you farewell in the spotless stretch of sand- sprinkled
hallway, the wooden floor of which was worn into knobs around the
nail heads by the countless scourings and scrubbings to which it
had been subjected and which left behind them an all-pervading
faint, fragrant odor of soap and warm water.
Eleazer Cooper and his wife were childless, but one inmate made
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
