| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: the carcase thrown into deep water outside the reefs; for who on
earth would have inquired after Bamtz?
"He had been known to loaf up and down the wilderness as far north
as the Gulf of Tonkin. Neither did he disdain a spell of
civilisation from time to time. And it was while loafing and
cadging in Saigon, bearded and dignified (he gave himself out there
as a bookkeeper), that he came across Laughing Anne.
"The less said of her early history the better, but something must
be said. We may safely suppose there was very little heart left in
her famous laugh when Bamtz spoke first to her in some low cafe.
She was stranded in Saigon with precious little money and in great
 Within the Tides |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: ride over master, so I carried him there.' He grinned at me again. It was
as though he said, 'You and I are comrades. I have lain in a road, too. I
know all about it.'
"When I turned my head from him I saw the earth, so pure after the rain, so
green, so fresh, so blue; and I was a drunken carrier, whom his leader had
picked up in the mud, and laid at the roadside to sleep out his drink. I
remember my old life, and I remember you. I saw how, one day, you would
read in the papers: 'A German carrier, named Waldo Farber, was killed
through falling from his wagon, being instantly crushed under the wheel.
Deceased was supposed to have been drunk at the time of the accident.'
There are those notices in the paper every month. I sat up, and I took the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: doubts that had come up in later years, and this renewal of faith
set more than one question thumping in her brain. "How did he,
how can he?" she kept repeating with a tinge of her childish
resentment, "what right had he to waste anything so fine?"
When Imogen and Arthur were returning from a walk before
luncheon one morning about a week after M. Roux's departure, they
noticed an absorbed group before one of the hall windows. Herr
Schotte and Restzhoff sat on the window seat with a newspaper
between them, while Wellington, Schemetzkin, and Will Maidenwood
looked over their shoulders. They seemed intensely interested,
Herr Schotte occasionally pounding his knees with his fists in
 The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |