| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: practically complete, as he stood on the platform,
superintending the porter's efforts to find his bags.
He turned it over and over in his thoughts, in the hansom,
more to familiarize himself with its details than to add
to them. He left the cab to wait for him at the mouth
of a little alley which delves its way into Old Broad
Street through towering walls of commercial buildings,
old and new.
Colin Semple was happily in his office--a congeries of small,
huddled rooms, dry and dirty with age, which had a doorway
of its own in a corner of the court--and Thorpe pushed on to his
The Market-Place |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: "Give the mate a call," I said to the young man who stood at my
elbow as still as death. "And turn all hands up."
My tone had a borrowed loudness reverberated from the height of the
land. Several voices cried out together: "We are all on deck,
sir."
Then stillness again, with the great shadow gliding closer,
towering higher, without a light, without a sound. Such a hush had
fallen on the ship that she might have been a bark of the dead
floating in slowly under the very gate of Erebus.
"My God! Where are we?"
It was the mate moaning at my elbow. He was thunderstruck, and as
'Twixt Land & Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: auction on the following morning; and as they glimmer faintly upon
us in the moonlight which steals through the grated window, we may
listen to their conversation. Both are weeping, but each quietly,
that the other may not hear.
"Mother, just lay your head on my lap, and see if you can't
sleep a little," says the girl, trying to appear calm.
"I haven't any heart to sleep, Em; I can't; it's the last
night we may be together!"
"O, mother, don't say so! perhaps we shall get sold
together,--who knows?"
"If 't was anybody's else case, I should say so, too, Em,"
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
