| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: himself a triumphant march to Jerusalem, and in which he would
probably have succeeded, if not hindered by the jealousies of the
Christian princes engaged in the same enterprise, and the offence
taken by them at the uncurbed haughtiness of the English monarch,
and Richard's unveiled contempt for his brother sovereigns, who,
his equals in rank, were yet far his inferiors in courage,
hardihood, and military talents. Such discords, and particularly
those betwixt Richard and Philip of France, created disputes and
obstacles which impeded every active measure proposed by the
heroic though impetuous Richard, while the ranks of the Crusaders
were daily thinned, not only by the desertion of individuals, but
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: taught her the rudiments of about ten different branches of knowledge,
but they would as soon have forced her to go through one piece of drudgery
thoroughly as they would have told her that her hands were dirty.
The one hour or the two hours weekly passed very pleasantly,
partly owing to the other pupils, partly to the fact that the window
looked upon the back of a shop, where figures appeared against
the red windows in winter, partly to the accidents that are bound
to happen when more than two people are in the same room together.
But there was no subject in the world which she knew accurately.
Her mind was in the state of an intelligent man's in the beginning
of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; she would believe practically
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: fields that hear only the song of birds. And I
should be startled myself. Ah! He was different:
innocent of heart, and full of good will, which no-
body wanted, this castaway, that, like a man trans-
planted into another planet, was separated by an
immense space from his past and by an immense
ignorance from his future. His quick, fervent ut-
terance positively shocked everybody. 'An excit-
able devil,' they called him. One evening, in the
tap-room of the Coach and Horses (having drunk
some whisky), he upset them all by singing a love
Amy Foster |
