| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: which the living element may be saved."
"Hear, hear!" said Shoesmith, faint but pursuing.
It must have been in my house afterwards that Shoesmith became
noticeable. He seemed trying to say something vague and difficult
that he didn't get said at all on that occasion. "We could do
immense things with a weekly," he repeated, echoing Neal, I think.
And there he left off and became a mute expressiveness, and it was
only afterwards, when I was in bed, that I saw we had our capitalist
in our hands. . . .
We parted that night on my doorstep in a tremendous glow--but in
that sort of glow one doesn't act upon without much reconsideration,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: Except, within these two days, six of them,
That are the wealthiest merchants in the town,
Come naked, all but for their linen shirts,
With each a halter hanged about his neck,
And prostrate yield themselves, upon their knees,
To be afflicted, hanged, or what I please;
And so you may inform their masterships.
[Exeunt Edward and Percy.]
CAPTAIN.
Why, this it is to trust a broken staff:
Had we not been persuaded, John our King
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: imagination, the coming into existence of the first book is quite
an inexplicable event. In my own case I cannot trace it back to
any mental or psychological cause which one could point out and
hold to. The greatest of my gifts being a consummate capacity
for doing nothing, I cannot even point to boredom as a rational
stimulus for taking up a pen. The pen, at any rate, was there,
and there is nothing wonderful in that. Everybody keeps a pen
(the cold steel of our days) in his rooms, in this enlightened
age of penny stamps and halfpenny post-cards. In fact, this was
the epoch when by means of postcard and pen Mr. Gladstone had
made the reputation of a novel or two. And I, too, had a pen
A Personal Record |
