| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: hypothesis that he must have dropped off for a minute. And then he
says he wouldn't mind sitting in at a little gentleman's game of
poker. He used to play some when he attended high school in Brooklyn;
and as he was out for a good time, why--and so forth.
"Andy brights up a little at that, for it looks like it might be a
solution to our financial troubles. So we all three go to our hotel
further down Broadway and have the cards and chips brought up to
Andy's room. I tried once more to make this Babe in the Horticultural
Gardens take his five thousand. But no.
"'Keep that little roll for me, Mr. Peters,' says he, 'and oblige.
I'll ask you fer it when I want it. I guess I know when I'm among
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: desired by us two days or even one day beforehand: the crisis
alone evoked them.''
Not that we must consider the events of the Revolution as
dominated by an imperious fatality. The readers of our works
will know that we recognise in the man of superior qualities the
role of averting fatalities. But he can dissociate himself
only from a few of such, and is often powerless before the
sequence of events which even at their origin could scarcely be
ruled. The scientist knows how to destroy the microbe before it
has time to act, but he knows himself powerless to prevent the
evolution of the resulting malady.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: betel-nut chewing mother, squatting in a dark hut, disorderly,
half naked, and sulky. He also feared an outbreak of temper on
the part of that pest of a woman he had hitherto managed to keep
tolerably quiet, thereby saving the remnants of his dilapidated
furniture. And he stood there before the closed door of the hut
in the blazing sunshine listening to the murmur of voices,
wondering what went on inside, wherefrom all the servant-maids
had been expelled at the beginning of the interview, and now
stood clustered by the palings with half-covered faces in a
chatter of curious speculation. He forgot himself there trying
to catch a stray word through the bamboo walls, till the captain
Almayer's Folly |
