| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: boys in relation to army needs. But the war itself was bearing
them all upon its way, as unquestioned and uncontrolled as if it
were the planet on which they lived.
II. THE YIELDING PACIFIST AND THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR
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Among the minor topics that people are talking about behind the
western fronts is the psychology of the Yielding Pacifist and the
Conscientious Objector. Of course, we are all pacifists
nowadays; I know of no one who does not want not only to end this
war but to put an end to war altogether, except those blood-red
terrors Count Reventlow, Mr. Leo Maxse--how he does it on a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: stairs. She wrung her hands. 'I couldn't. I
couldn't. He keeps on saying something--I don't
know what.' With the memory of all the talk
against the man that had been dinned into her ears,
I looked at her narrowly. I looked into her short-
sighted eyes, at her dumb eyes that once in her life
had seen an enticing shape, but seemed, staring at
me, to see nothing at all now. But I saw she was
uneasy.
"'What's the matter with him?' she asked in a
sort of vacant trepidation. 'He doesn't look very
Amy Foster |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: they had three children, it was all that they could do to gain an
honest living. Yet I have never met with more sterling honesty than in
this man and wife. For five years after I left the quarter, Mere
Vaillant used to come on my birthday with a bunch of flowers and some
oranges for me--she that had never a sixpence to put by! Want had
drawn us together. I never could give her more than a ten-franc piece,
and often I had to borrow the money for the occasion. This will
perhaps explain my promise to go to the wedding; I hoped to efface
myself in these poor people's merry-making.
The banquet and the ball were given on a first floor above a wineshop
in the Rue de Charenton. It was a large room, lighted by oil lamps
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