| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: he cast its lights on what he had found, exclaiming immediately,
"Why, it is a child!"
The child still breathed, but so very feebly that Harry expected
it to cease every instant. Not a moment was to be lost;
he must carry this poor little creature out of the pit,
and take it home to his mother as quickly as he could. He
eagerly fastened the cord round his waist, stuck on his lamp,
clasped the child to his breast with his left arm, and, keeping his
right hand free to hold the knife, he gave the signal agreed on,
to have the rope pulled up.
It tightened at once; he began the ascent. Harry looked around him
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: exalted and dangerous figure. He, too, had his frailties. After
reading so many romances he desired naively to escape with his
very body from the intolerable reality of things. He wished to
meet, eye to eye, the valorous giant Brandabarbaran, Lord of
Arabia, whose armour is made of the skin of a dragon, and whose
shield, strapped to his arm, is the gate of a fortified city.
Oh, amiable and natural weakness! Oh, blessed simplicity of a
gentle heart without guile! Who would not succumb to such a
consoling temptation? Nevertheless, it was a form of
self-indulgence, and the ingenious hidalgo of La Mancha was not a
good citizen. The priest and the barber were not unreasonable in
A Personal Record |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: him to a chair.
Could this automaton be Margret? He leaned on the mantel-shelf,
looking down with a cynical sneer.
"Is that the welcome? Why, there are a thousand greetings for
this time of love and good words you might have chosen. Besides,
I have come back ill and poor,--a beggar perhaps. How do women
receive such,--generous women? Is there no etiquette? no
hand-shaking? nothing more? remembering that I was once--not
indifferent to you."
He laughed. She stood still and grave as before.
"Why, Margret, I have been down near death since that night."
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
