| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: imagination. This appeal is not always a charm, for there are
estuaries of a particularly dispiriting ugliness: lowlands, mud-
flats, or perhaps barren sandhills without beauty of form or
amenity of aspect, covered with a shabby and scanty vegetation
conveying the impression of poverty and uselessness. Sometimes
such an ugliness is merely a repulsive mask. A river whose estuary
resembles a breach in a sand rampart may flow through a most
fertile country. But all the estuaries of great rivers have their
fascination, the attractiveness of an open portal. Water is
friendly to man. The ocean, a part of Nature furthest removed in
the unchangeableness and majesty of its might from the spirit of
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: some dreadful death; but let me go my way, and bear my
burden. Have I not had enough of punishment and shame?'
'Who are you, strange maiden? and what is the meaning of your
prayer?'
'I am Medeia, daughter of Aietes, and I saw my countrymen
here to-day; and I know that they are come to find me, and
take me home to die some dreadful death.'
Then Arete frowned, and said, 'Lead this girl in, my maidens;
and let the kings decide, not I.'
And Alcinous leapt up from his throne, and cried, 'Speak,
strangers, who are you? And who is this maiden?'
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: disappeared.
During the evening he had been standing against a bar drinking
whiskies and declaring to all comers, confidentially: "My home
reg'lar livin' hell! Damndes' place! Reg'lar hell! Why do I come
an' drin' whisk' here thish way? 'Cause home reg'lar livin' hell!"
Jimmie waited a long time in the street and then crept warily
up through the building. He passed with great caution the door of
the gnarled woman, and finally stopped outside his home and listened.
He could hear his mother moving heavily about among the
furniture of the room. She was chanting in a mournful voice,
occasionally interjecting bursts of volcanic wrath at the father,
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
