| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: 'And if indeed I cast the brand away,
Surely a precious thing, one worthy note,
Should thus be lost for ever from the earth,
Which might have pleased the eyes of many men.
What good should follow this, if this were done?
What harm, undone? Deep harm to disobey,
Seeing obedience is the bond of rule.
Were it well to obey then, if a king demand
An act unprofitable, against himself?
The King is sick, and knows not what he does.
What record, or what relic of my lord
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: for the snow. Soon afterwards dark huts came into sight ahead of
us as in a fog. It was Pestrovo.
"If I ever go out of my mind, Pestrovo will be the cause of it,"
I thought. "It persecutes me."
We came out into the village street. All the roofs were intact,
not one of them had been pulled to pieces; so my bailiff had told
a lie. A boy was pulling along a little girl and a baby in a
sledge. Another boy of three, with his head wrapped up like a
peasant woman's and with huge mufflers on his hands, was trying
to catch the flying snowflakes on his tongue, and laughing. Then
a wagon loaded with fagots came toward us and a peasant walking
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: Baron knew what I was worth to his country. And here suddenly a
swine comes along - an ignorant, overbearing swine."
Mr Verloc, stepping slowly down two steps, entered the kitchen,
took a tumbler off the dresser, and holding it in his hand,
approached the sink, without looking at his wife. "It wasn't the
old Baron who would have had the wicked folly of getting me to call
on him at eleven in the morning. There are two or three in this
town that, if they had seen me going in, would have made no bones
about knocking me on the head sooner or later. It was a silly,
murderous trick to expose for nothing a man - like me."
Mr Verloc, turning on the tap above the sink, poured three glasses
The Secret Agent |
