| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: not of theory but of experience that in the close-woven stuff of
relations between conspirator and police there occur unexpected
solutions of continuity, sudden holes in space and time. A given
anarchist may be watched inch by inch and minute by minute, but a
moment always comes when somehow all sight and touch of him are
lost for a few hours, during which something (generally an
explosion) more or less deplorable does happen. But the high
official, carried away by his sense of the fitness of things, had
smiled, and now the recollection of that smile was very annoying to
Chief Inspector Heat, principal expert in anarchist procedure.
This was not the only circumstance whose recollection depressed the
The Secret Agent |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: made him know that he should take them. Billy talked away, laying bare
his little soul; the street boy that was not quite come made place for
the child that was not quite gone, and unimportant words and confidences
dropped from him disjointed as he climbed to the knee of Mr. McLean, and
inadvertently took that cow-puncher for some sort of parent he had not
hitherto met. It lasted but a short while, however, for he went to sleep
in the middle of a sentence, with his head upon Lin's breast. The man
held him perfectly still, because he had not the faintest notion that
Billy would be impossible to disturb. At length he spoke to him,
suggesting that bed might prove more comfortable; and, finding how it
was, rose and undressed the boy and laid him between the sheets. The arms
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: Mr. Mudge, who had remained on the bench, looked up at her; she
often preferred to be quiet when he proposed to walk, but now that
he seemed to wish to sit she had a desire to move. "But you
haven't told me what HE has found out."
She considered her lover. "He'd never find YOU, my dear!"
Her lover, still on his seat, appealed to her in something of the
attitude in which she had last left Captain Everard, but the
impression was not the same. "Then where do I come in?"
"You don't come in at all. That's just the beauty of it!"--and
with this she turned to mingle with the multitude collected round
the band. Mr. Mudge presently overtook her and drew her arm into
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