| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: the tempestuous anguish of his soul. And later on I seemed to see
his collected languid manner, when he said one day, `This lot
of ivory now is really mine. The Company did not pay for it.
I collected it myself at a very great personal risk.
I am afraid they will try to claim it as theirs though.
H'm. It is a difficult case. What do you think I ought
to do--resist? Eh? I want no more than justice.'
. . . He wanted no more than justice--no more than justice.
I rang the bell before a mahogany door on the first floor,
and while I waited he seemed to stare at me out of the glassy panel--
stare with that wide and immense stare embracing, condemning,
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: running away by night, without knowing one inch of the way.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. I wish we were at home again. I never met so many
accidents in so short a journey. Drenched in the mud, overturned in a
ditch, stuck fast in a slough, jolted to a jelly, and at last to lose
our way. Whereabouts do you think we are, Tony?
TONY. By my guess we should come upon Crackskull Common, about forty
miles from home.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. O lud! O lud! The most notorious spot in all the
country. We only want a robbery to make a complete night on't.
TONY. Don't be afraid, mamma, don't be afraid. Two of the five that
kept here are hanged, and the other three may not find us. Don't be
She Stoops to Conquer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: the Sabbath by a sacred vacancy of mind. She came near him and stood
still.
"I'm for off up the muirs, Dandie," she said.
There was something unusually soft in her tones that made him look up.
She was pale, her eyes dark and bright; no trace remained of the levity
of the morning.
"Ay, lass? Ye'll have yer ups and downs like me, I'm thinkin'," he
observed.
"What for do ye say that?" she asked.
"O, for naething," says Dand. "Only I think ye're mair like me than the
lave of them. Ye've mair of the poetic temper, tho' Guid kens little
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