| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: that the sale of Tono-Bungay was a thoroughly dishonest
proceeding. The stuff was, I perceived, a mischievous trash,
slightly stimulating, aromatic and attractive, likely to become a
bad habit and train people in the habitual use of stronger tonics
and insidiously dangerous to people with defective kidneys. It
would cost about sevenpence the large bottle to make, including
bottling, and we were to sell it at half a crown plus the cost of
the patent medicine stamp. A thing that I will confess deterred
me from the outset far more than the sense of dishonesty in this
affair, was the supreme silliness of the whole concern. I still
clung to the idea that the world of men was or should be a sane
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: motionless and silent, catch from the air the ship's motive-power,
as it were a gift from Heaven vouchsafed to the audacity of man;
and it is the ship's tall spars, stripped and shorn of their white
glory, that incline themselves before the anger of the clouded
heaven.
When they yield to a squall in a gaunt and naked submission, their
tallness is brought best home even to the mind of a seaman. The
man who has looked upon his ship going over too far is made aware
of the preposterous tallness of a ship's spars. It seems
impossible but that those gilt trucks which one had to tilt one's
head back to see, now falling into the lower plane of vision, must
The Mirror of the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: During the expedition in Upper Egypt under General Desaix, a Provencal
soldier fell into the hands of the Maugrabins, and was taken by these
Arabs into the deserts beyond the falls of the Nile.
In order to place a sufficient distance between themselves and the
French army, the Maugrabins made forced marches, and only halted when
night was upon them. They camped round a well overshadowed by palm
trees under which they had previously concealed a store of provisions.
Not surmising that the notion of flight would occur to their prisoner,
they contented themselves with binding his hands, and after eating a
few dates, and giving provender to their horses, went to sleep.
When the brave Provencal saw that his enemies were no longer watching
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