| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: the weather is beautifully calm, and the steam-launch will answer
our purpose better; at any rate, it will convey us much closer
to shore than the schooner."
The count replied that the lieutenant was by all means to use
his own discretion, and they all retired for the night.
Like many other modern pleasure-yachts, the _Dobryna_, in addition
to her four-oar, was fitted with a fast-going little steam-launch,
its screw being propelled, on the Oriolle system, by means of a boiler,
small but very effective. Early next morning, this handy little craft
was sufficiently freighted with coal (of which there was still about ten
tons on board the _Dobryna_), and manned by nobody except the captain,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates: And all the time George alternately bent his brews upon me, and
hung himself at the canvas, uttering strange, smothered cries and
oaths, but painting, painting.... At a quarter past two he laid
down his palette and cried to me to descend. Stiffly I did so.
For a long moment I looked at the portrait. Then I turned to
George and clapped him on the back.
"I think you're going to make a name," said I.
"That's right," he said. "And now give me a cigarette."
Before we went to lunch, he showed me the picture of the girl.
It was almost finished. Such a fine, brave face. Not a bit
pretty- just beautiful. Dark hair showing under the brim of the
The Brother of Daphne |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: Ben up surprisingly--while it lasted. He had two bottles of it.
But on discontinuing it he slumped back into his old apathy.
Ben Westerveld, in his store clothes, his clean blue shirt, his
incongruous hat, ambling aimlessly about Chicago's teeming,
gritty streets, was a tragedy. Those big, capable hands, now
dangling so limply from inert wrists, had wrested a living from
the soil; those strangely unfaded blue eyes had the keenness of
vision which comes from scanning great stretches of earth and
sky; the stocky, square-shouldered body suggested power
unutilized. All these spelled tragedy. Worse than
tragedy--waste.
One Basket |
