| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: just then was drawn in another direction. He had heard subdued
exclamations, had noticed a stir on the decks of the Emma, and
even some sort of noise outside the ship.
"These are strange sounds," he said.
"Yes, I hear," Mrs. Travers murmured, uneasily.
Vague shapes glided outside the Cage, barefooted, almost
noiseless, whispering Malay words secretly.
"It seems as though a boat had come alongside," observed
d'Alcacer, lending an attentive ear. "I wonder what it means. In
our position. . . ."
"It may mean anything," interrupted Mrs. Travers.
The Rescue |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: plants had lengthened into a stem and were even putting forth a second
whorl of leaves, and all the slope that had seemed so recently a lifeless
stretch of litter was now dark with the stunted olive-green herbage of
bristling spikes that swayed with the vigour of their growing.
I turned about, and behold! along the upper edge of a rock to the eastward
a similar fringe in a scarcely less forward condition swayed and bent,
dark against the blinding glare of the sun. And beyond this fringe was the
silhouette of a plant mass, branching clumsily like a cactus, and swelling
visibly, swelling like a bladder that fills with air.
Then to the westward also I discovered that another such distended form
was rising over the scrub. But here the light fell upon its sleek sides,
The First Men In The Moon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: longer public or private; I lingered there for hours gazing at the
disorder. I would not, as the price of the story to which this strange
scene no doubt was due, have asked a single question of any gossiping
native. On that spot I wove delightful romances, and abandoned myself
to little debauches of melancholy which enchanted me. If I had known
the reason--perhaps quite commonplace--of this neglect, I should have
lost the unwritten poetry which intoxicated me. To me this refuge
represented the most various phases of human life, shadowed by
misfortune; sometimes the peace of the graveyard without the dead, who
speak in the language of epitaphs; one day I saw in it the home of
lepers; another, the house of the Atridae; but, above all, I found
La Grande Breteche |
