| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: now."
She gently owned that she supposed she was. "I heard what you
said when you thought I was injured," she went on, shyly, "and I
know that a man who could suffer as you were suffering must have a
tender regard for me. But how does this awful thing come here?"
"I suppose it has something to do with poachers." Fitzpiers was
still so shaken by the sense of her danger that he was obliged to
sit awhile, and it was not until Grace said, "If I could only get
my skirt out nobody would know anything about it," that he
bestirred himself.
By their united efforts, each standing on one of the springs of
The Woodlanders |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: man, and my friend. He spoke of her with fury in the daytime, with
sorrow in the dark; he remembered her in health, in sickness. I said
nothing; but I saw her every day--always! At first I saw only her
head, as of a woman walking in the low mist on a river bank. Then she
sat by our fire. I saw her! I looked at her! She had tender eyes and a
ravishing face. I murmured to her in the night. Matara said sleepily
sometimes, 'To whom are you talking? Who is there?' I answered
quickly, 'No one' . . . It was a lie! She never left me. She shared
the warmth of our fire, she sat on my couch of leaves, she swam on the
sea to follow me. . . . I saw her! . . . I tell you I saw her long
black hair spread behind her upon the moonlit water as she struck out
Tales of Unrest |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: 'Well,' said he, after considering, and with the air of one who
wishes to take time and be accurate, 'It's a hell of a place.'
A description which was photographic for exactness. There were
several rows and clusters of shabby frame-houses, and a supply of mud
sufficient to insure the town against a famine in that article
for a hundred years; for the overflow had but lately subsided.
There were stagnant ponds in the streets, here and there, and a dozen
rude scows were scattered about, lying aground wherever they happened
to have been when the waters drained off and people could do their
visiting and shopping on foot once more. Still, it is a thriving place,
with a rich country behind it, an elevator in front of it,
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