| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground.
Forbidden ground was the question of the return of the dead
in general and of whatever, in especial, might survive,
in memory, of the friends little children had lost.
There were days when I could have sworn that one of them had,
with a small invisible nudge, said to the other:
"She thinks she'll do it this time--but she WON'T!" To "do it"
would have been to indulge for instance--and for once in a way--
in some direct reference to the lady who had prepared them for
my discipline. They had a delightful endless appetite for passages
in my own history, to which I had again and again treated them;
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: loose between his knees. I was watching Alison; from where I stood,
behind her, I could almost touch the soft hair behind her ear.
"I have no intention of pressing any charge against you," I said
with forced civility, for my hands were itching to get at him, "if
you will give us a clear account of what happened on the Ontario
that night."
Sullivan raised his handsome, haggard head and looked around at me.
"I've seen you before, haven't I?" he asked. "Weren't you an
uninvited guest at the Laurels a few days - or nights - ago? The
cat, you remember, and the rug that slipped?"
"I remember," I said shortly. He glanced from me to Alison and
The Man in Lower Ten |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: after it had vanished in full flight as it were, notwith-
standing the long line of vehicles hugging the curb at
a walk, the whole lofty vista of the avenue seemed to lie
open and emptied of life in the enlarged impression of
an august solitude.
Captain Whalley had lifted his head to look, and his
mind, disturbed in its meditation, turned with wonder
(as men's minds will do) to matters of no importance.
It struck him that it was to this port, where he had
just sold his last ship, that he had come with the very
first he had ever owned, and with his head full of a plan
End of the Tether |
