The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: then a clanging clatter. The window rumbled
down, and he stood before her again.
"It's just like old times. Nearly walloped the
life out of me to stop me going away, and now I
come back he throws a confounded shovel at my
head to keep me out. It grazed my shoulder."
She shuddered.
"I wouldn't care," he began, "only I spent my
last shillings on the railway fare and my last two-
pence on a shave--out of respect for the old man."
"Are you really Harry Hagberd?" she asked.
To-morrow |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: they would have the evening together. When he followed her to the
drawing-room after dinner he thought himself on the point of
speaking; but as she handed him his coffee he said, involuntarily:
"I shall have to carry this off to the study, I've got a lot of
work to-night."
Alone in the study he cursed his cowardice. What was it that had
withheld him? A certain bright unapproachableness seemed to keep
him at arm's length. She was not the kind of woman whose
compassion could be circumvented; there was no chance of slipping
past the outposts; he would never take her by surprise. Well--why
not face her, then? What he shrank from could be no worse than
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, How
this number shall be reared, and provided for? which, as I have
already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly
impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can
neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither
build houses, (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they
can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing till they arrive
at six years old; except where they are of towardly parts,
although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier; during
which time they can however be properly looked upon only as
probationers: As I have been informed by a principal gentleman in
A Modest Proposal |