| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: every evening for years in that place; he listened to the voice that
for five years he had heard every day. Perhaps she was a little
pale--but a healthy pallor had always been for him one of her chief
attractions. Perhaps her face was rigidly set--but that marmoreal
impassiveness, that magnificent stolidity, as of a wonderful statue by
some great sculptor working under the curse of the gods; that
imposing, unthinking stillness of her features, had till then
mirrored for him the tranquil dignity of a soul of which he had
thought himself--as a matter of course--the inexpugnable possessor.
Those were the outward signs of her difference from the ignoble herd
that feels, suffers, fails, errs--but has no distinct value in the
Tales of Unrest |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: her sister who lived on this street, a short distance from here,
committed suicide. When the servant discovered it she ran
directly to my wife's room, and told her of the tragedy. My wife
began to tremble, had a severe chill, and soon became delirious.
I suspect that her sister's spirit accompanied the servant and
entered my wife."
In spite of this explanation I cleaned and dressed the wound and
left her more comfortable. The next morning she was somewhat
better, without fever and in her right mind.
"What kind of a night did she have?" I asked her husband.
"Oh, very good," he answered. "I managed to get the spirit out of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: above his company, to give himself the airs of a man of the world
among that rustic herd; which was often no more than his due;
being, as I afterwards discovered, an attorney's clerk. I took
upon myself the more ungrateful part of arriving last; and by the
time I entered on the scene the Major was already served at a side
table. Some general conversation must have passed, and I smelled
danger in the air. The Major looked flustered, the attorney's
clerk triumphant, and three or four peasants in smock-frocks (who
sat about the fire to play chorus) had let their pipes go out.
'Give you good evening, sir!' said the attorney's clerk to me.
'The same to you, sir,' said I.
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