| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: idle upon a siding, and the box-like darkness of these freight-cars was
timely. Nights were short now. Camping out, the dawn by three o'clock
would flow like silver through the universe, and, sinking through my
blankets, remorselessly pervade my buried hair and brain. But with clean
straw in the bottom of an empty, I could sleep my fill until five or six.
I decided for the empty, and opened the supper-room door, where the table
was set for more than enough to include me; but the smell of the butter
that awaited us drove me out of the Hotel Brunswick to spend the
remaining minutes in the air.
"I was expecting you," said the girl. "Well, if I haven't frightened
him!" She laughed so delightfully that I recovered and laughed too.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: a screen of peacock's feathers given to her by Paul,--a gift which is
to love, according to superstitious belief in certain countries, as
dangerous an omen as the gift of scissors or other cutting
instruments, which recall, no doubt, the Parces of antiquity.
Seated beside the two notaries, Madame Evangelista gave her closest
attention to the reading of the documents. After listening to the
guardianship account, most ably written out by Solonet, in which
Natalie's share of the three million and more francs left by Monsieur
Evangelista was shown to be the much-debated eleven hundred and fifty-
six thousand, Madame Evangelista said to the heedless young couple:--
"Come, listen, listen, my children; this is your marriage contract."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: fanatical advocate of temperance could not be more pitilessly
fierce in his rectitude than the Marine Department of the Board
of Trade. As I have been face to face at various times with all
the examiners of the Port of London, in my generation, there can
be no doubt as to the force and the continuity of my
abstemiousness. Three of them were examiners in seamanship, and
it was my fate to be delivered into the hands of each of them at
proper intervals of sea service. The first of all, tall, spare,
with a perfectly white head and moustache, a quiet, kindly
manner, and an air of benign intelligence, must, I am forced to
conclude, have been unfavourably impressed by something in my
Some Reminiscences |
