| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: to exist, missing all along the varied forms of destruction by a
hair's-breadth, saving my body, that's clear, and perhaps my soul
also, but not without some damage here and there to the fine edge
of my conscience, that heirloom of the ages, of the race, of the
group, of the family, colourable and plastic, fashioned by the
words, the looks, the acts, and even by the silences and
abstentions surrounding one's childhood; tinged in a complete
scheme of delicate shades and crude colours by the inherited
traditions, beliefs, or prejudices--unaccountable, despotic,
persuasive, and often, in its texture, romantic.
And often romantic! . . . The matter in hand, however, is to
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith: Where he rested o'erawed: a saint's scorn on her face;
Such a dread vade retro was written in light
On her forehead, the fiend would himself, at that sight,
Have sunk back abash'd to perdition. I know
If Lucretia at Tarquin but once had looked so,
She had needed no dagger next morning.
She rose
And swept to the door, like that phantom the snows
Feel at nightfall sweep o'er them, when daylight is gone,
And Caucasus is with the moon all alone.
There she paused; and, as though from immeasurable,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: chasing of the silver were more precious even than the jewels which
studded it, and whose rough setting gave so firm a grasp to my
hand. Was the blade as fair as the covering, I wondered? A little
resistance at first, and then the long thin steel slid easily out.
Sharp, and bright, and finely tempered it looked with its deadly,
tapering point. Stains, dull and irregular, crossed the fine
engraving on its surface and dimmed its polish. I bent to examine
them more closely, and as I did so a sudden stronger gust of wind
blew out the candle. I shuddered a little at the darkness and
looked up. But it did not matter: the curtain was still drawn away
from the window opposite my bedside, and through it a flood of
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