| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: unreason, all the fatuous unreason, of our compla-
cency. "Go ahead" are not particularly striking
words even when pronounced with a foreign accent;
yet they petrified me in the very act of smiling at
myself in the glass. And then, refusing to believe
my ears, but already boiling with indignation, I
ran out of the cabin and up on deck.
It was incredibly true. It was perfectly true. I
had no eyes for anything but the Diana. It was she,
then, was being taken away. She was already out
of her berth and shooting athwart the river. "The
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: catastrophe. Consequently, as soon as he heard from Alessandro of the
negotiation for Catherine's marriage with the son of Francois I., the
final arrangements for which were to be made at Livorno, where the
negotiators had appointed to meet, he formed the plan of going to
France, and attaching himself to the fortunes of his niece, who needed
a guardian.
Alessandro, delighted to rid himself of a man so unaccommodating in
the affairs of Florence, furthered a plan which relieved him of one
murder at least, and advised Strozzi to put himself at the head of
Catherine's household. In order to dazzle the eyes of France the
Medici had selected a brilliant suite for her whom they styled, very
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: Our first camp on Tchitagama was at the sunrise end of the lake, in
a bay paved with small round stones, laid close together and beaten
firmly down by the waves. There, and along the shores below, at
the mouth of a little river that foamed in over a ledge of granite,
and in the shadow of cliffs of limestone and feldspar, we trolled
and took many fish: pike of enormous size, fresh-water sharks,
devourers of nobler game, fit only to kill and throw away; huge old
trout of six or seven pounds, with broad tails and hooked jaws,
fine fighters and poor food; stupid, wide-mouthed chub--ouitouche,
the Indians call them--biting at hooks that were not baited for
them; and best of all, high-bred onananiche, pleasant to capture
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