| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: him drinks too, says Cloete; I never said I would be responsible
for drinks. How many? . . . Two, says the other. It's all right.
I don't mind doing that much for a shipwrecked sailor. . . Cloete
smiles his funny smile: Eh? Come. He paid for them. . . The
publican just blinks. . . Gave you gold, didn't he? Speak up! . .
. What of that! cries the man. What are you after, anyway? He had
the right change for his sovereign.
"Just so, says Cloete. He walks into the parlour, and there he
sees our Stafford; hair all up on end, landlord's shirt and pants
on, bare feet in slippers, sitting by the fire. When he sees
Cloete he casts his eyes down.
Within the Tides |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: not disorder or misrule, my friend. But although you are a philosopher you
seem to me never to have observed that geometrical equality is mighty, both
among gods and men; you think that you ought to cultivate inequality or
excess, and do not care about geometry.--Well, then, either the principle
that the happy are made happy by the possession of justice and temperance,
and the miserable miserable by the possession of vice, must be refuted, or,
if it is granted, what will be the consequences? All the consequences
which I drew before, Callicles, and about which you asked me whether I was
in earnest when I said that a man ought to accuse himself and his son and
his friend if he did anything wrong, and that to this end he should use his
rhetoric--all those consequences are true. And that which you thought that
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: Amy Foster sobbed piteously at the kitchen door,
wringing her hands and muttering, 'Don't!
don't!' I daresay Smith had a rough time of it
that evening with one noise and another, and this
insane, disturbing voice crying obstinately through
the door only added to his irritation. He couldn't
possibly have connected this troublesome lunatic
with the sinking of a ship in Eastbay, of which
there had been a rumour in the Darnford market-
place. And I daresay the man inside had been very
near to insanity on that night. Before his excite-
Amy Foster |
