| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: What on earth was the helmsman to do?
Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:
A thing, as the Bellman remarked,
That frequently happens in tropical climes,
When a vessel is, so to speak, "snarked."
But the principal failing occurred in the sailing,
And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,
Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,
That the ship would not travel due West!
But the danger was past--they had landed at last,
With their boxes, portmanteaus, and bags:
The Hunting of the Snark |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: men are wrapped in mystery. But we agreed that
the times were changed. And we talked of old
ships, of sea-accidents, of break-downs, dismast-
ings; and of a man who brought his ship safe to
Liverpool all the way from the River Platte under
a jury rudder. We talked of wrecks, of short ra-
tions and of heroism--or at least of what the news-
papers would have called heroism at sea--a mani-
festation of virtues quite different from the heroism
of primitive times. And now and then falling silent
all together we gazed at the sights of the river.
Falk |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: What did Jean Valjean want? To finish what he had begun; to warn Cosette,
to tell her where Marius was, to give her, possibly, some other
useful information, to take, if he could, certain final measures.
As for himself, so far as he was personally concerned, all was over;
he had been seized by Javert and had not resisted; any other man
than himself in like situation would, perhaps, have had some vague
thoughts connected with the rope which Thenardier had given him,
and of the bars of the first cell that he should enter; but, let us
impress it upon the reader, after the Bishop, there had existed in
Jean Valjean a profound hesitation in the presence of any violence,
even when directed against himself.
Les Miserables |
