| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: felt from stem to stern and found the boat deserted.
Groping with my hands along the face of the rocks to which the
craft was moored, I discovered a narrow ledge which I knew must be
the avenue taken by those who had come before me. That they could
be none other than Thurid and his party I was convinced by the size
and build of the boat I had found.
Calling to Woola to follow me I stepped out upon the ledge.
The great, savage brute, agile as a cat, crept after me.
The Warlord of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: taken place during the usual interval between two dances, in front of
the fireplace of the great drawing-room of Gondreville's mansion. The
questions and answers of this very ordinary ballroom gossip had been
almost whispered by each of the speakers into his neighbor's ear. At
the same time, the chandeliers and the flambeaux on the chimney-shelf
shed such a flood of light on the two friends that their faces,
strongly illuminated, failed, in spite of their diplomatic discretion,
to conceal the faint expression of their feelings either from the
keen-sighted countess or the artless stranger. This espionage of
people's thoughts is perhaps to idle persons one of the pleasures they
find in society, while numbers of disappointed numskulls are bored
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: "Do you know what he wanted next? Well, he
wanted to trim the yards. Very placidly, and as if lost
in thought, he insisted on having the foreyard squared.
'I don't know if there's anybody alive,' said Mahon,
almost tearfully. 'Surely,' he said gently, 'there will
be enough left to square the foreyard.'
"The old chap, it seems, was in his own berth, wind-
ing up the chronometers, when the shock sent him spin-
ning. Immediately it occurred to him--as he said after-
wards--that the ship had struck something, and he ran
out into the cabin. There, he saw, the cabin-table had
Youth |
