| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: wake of the moon under a sable wing, while to them our sail must
have been a vision of white and dazzling radiance. Without
altering the course a hair's breadth we slipped by each other
within an oar's length. A drawling, sardonic hail came out of
her. Instantly, as if by magic, our dozing pilots got on their
feet in a body. An incredible babel of bantering shouts burst
out, a jocular, passionate, voluble chatter, which lasted till
the boats were stern to stern, theirs all bright now, and, with a
shining sail to our eyes, we turned all black to their vision,
and drew away from them under a sable wing. That extraordinary
uproar died away almost as suddenly as it had begun; first one
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: For instance, though colored children attended the schools,
and were treated kindly by their teachers, the New Bedford Lyceum
refused, till several years after my residence in that city,
to allow any colored person to attend the lectures delivered in its
hall. Not until such men as Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Horace Mann refused to lecture in their
course while there was such a restriction, was it abandoned.
Becoming satisfied that I could not rely on my trade in New
Bedford to give me a living, I prepared myself to do any kind of
work that came to hand. I sawed wood, shoveled coal, dug cellars,
moved rubbish from back yards, worked on the wharves, loaded and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: positively closed her eyes as I moved them away.
The waitress came back with the chocolate and the tea. She put the big,
frothing cups before them and pushed across my clear glass. Hennie buried
his nose, emerged, with, for one dreadful moment, a little trembling blob
of cream on the tip. But he hastily wiped it off like a little gentleman.
I wondered if I should dare draw her attention to her cup. She didn't
notice it--didn't see it--until suddenly, quite by chance, she took a sip.
I watched anxiously; she faintly shuddered.
"Dreadfully sweet!" said she.
A tiny boy with a head like a raisin and a chocolate body came round with a
tray of pastries--row upon row of little freaks, little inspirations,
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