| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: should suffice to open--and the grasp of an external fate
ineluctable as gravity. To any man there may come at times a
consciousness that there blows, through all the articulations of
his body, the wind of a spirit not wholly his; that his mind
rebels; that another girds him and carries him whither he would
not. It came now to Herrick, with the authority of a revelation.
There was no escape possible. The open door was closed in his
recreant face. He must go back into the world and amongst men
without illusion. He must stagger on to the end with the pack of
his responsibility and his disgrace, until a cold, a blow, a
merciful chance ball, or the more merciful hangman, should
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: Being prison'd in her eye, like pearls in glass; 980
Yet sometimes falls an orient drop beside,
Which her cheek melts, as scorning it should pass
To wash the foul face of the sluttish ground,
Who is but drunken when she seemeth drown'd.
O hard-believing love! how strange it seems 985
Not to believe, and yet too credulous;
Thy weal and woe are both of them extremes;
Despair and hope make thee ridiculous: 988
The one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely,
In likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: . . . "
My levity was too much for Mrs. Fyne. Still leaning back in her
chair she exclaimed:
"Mr. Marlow!"
As if mysteriously affected by her indignation the absurd Fyne dog
began to bark in the porch. It might have been at a trespassing
bumble-bee however. That animal was capable of any eccentricity.
Fyne got up quickly and went out to him. I think he was glad to
leave us alone to discuss that matter of his journey to London. A
sort of anti-sentimental journey. He, too, apparently, had
confidence in my sagacity. It was touching, this confidence. It
Chance |
