| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: rear. My tutor, after pausing for a look and a faint smile,
resumed his earnest argument.
I tell you it was a memorable year! One does not meet such an
Englishman twice in a lifetime. Was he in the mystic ordering of
common events the ambassador of my future, sent out to turn the
scale at a critical moment on the top of an Alpine pass, with the
peaks of the Bernese Oberland for mute and solemn witnesses? His
glance, his smile, the unextinguishable and comic ardour of his
striving-forward appearance helped me to pull myself together.
It must be stated that on that day and in the exhilarating
atmosphere of that elevated spot I had been feeling utterly
Some Reminiscences |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: from this dismantled nest into the wide world? What guests
found refuge----
"Take care! stand back! There is a rattlesnake in the old
cellar."
The voice, even more than the words, startled me. I drew
away suddenly, and saw, behind the ruins of the chimney, a man
of an aspect so striking that to this day his face and figure
are as vivid in my memory as if it were but yesterday that I
had met him.
He was dressed in black, the coat of a somewhat formal
cut, a long cravat loosely knotted in his rolling collar. His
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: and respect which you have hitherto professed, if the pure flame of
passion which first kindled the fire of my heart should seem to me any
day to burn less vividly, you need fear no reproaches. I would not
weary you with letters bearing any trace of weakness, pride, or anger,
nor even with one of warning like this. But if I spoke no words,
Felipe, my face would tell you that death was near. And yet I should
not die till I had branded you with infamy, and sown eternal sorrow in
your heart; you would see the girl you loved dishonored and lost in
this world, and know her doomed to everlasting suffering in the next.
Do not therefore, I implore you, give me cause to envy the old, happy
Louise, the object of your pure worship, whose heart expanded in the
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