| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: stranded barges lie; and the narrow lanes coming down to the
foreshore resemble the paths of smashed bushes and crumbled earth
where big game comes to drink on the banks of tropical streams.
Behind the growth of the London waterside the docks of London
spread out unsuspected, smooth, and placid, lost amongst the
buildings like dark lagoons hidden in a thick forest. They lie
concealed in the intricate growth of houses with a few stalks of
mastheads here and there overtopping the roof of some four-story
warehouse.
It is a strange conjunction this of roofs and mastheads, of walls
and yard-arms. I remember once having the incongruity of the
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: surprised me. It was therefore not till much later, from Meran,
that I risked another appeal, risked it in some trepidation, for
she continued to tell me nothing. "Did you hear in those few days
of your blighted bliss," I wrote, "what we desired so to hear?" I
said, "we," as a little hint and she showed me she could take a
little hint; "I heard everything," she replied, "and I mean to keep
it to myself!"
CHAPTER IX.
IT was impossible not to be moved with the strongest sympathy for
her, and on my return to England I showed her every kindness in my
power. Her mother's death had made her means sufficient, and she
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: have no patience with him and do not intend to treat him as
infallible, are pitiable as far as they are anything but ludicrous.
That is what comes of not being taught to consider other people's
wills, and left to submit to them or to over-ride them as if they were
the winds and the weather. Such a state of mind is incompatible not
only with the democratic introduction of high civilization, but with
the comprehension and maintenance of such civilized institutions as
have been introduced by benevolent and intelligent despots and
aristocrats.
We Must Reform Society before we can Reform Ourselves
When we come to the positive problem of what to do with children if we
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