| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: mother's side, as she slept, and given into the charge of a common
peasant and his wife, who were without children of their own, and
lived in a remote part of the forest, more than a day's ride from
the town. Grief, or the plague, as the court physician stated, or,
as some suggested, a swift Italian poison administered in a cup of
spiced wine, slew, within an hour of her wakening, the white girl
who had given him birth, and as the trusty messenger who bare the
child across his saddle-bow stooped from his weary horse and
knocked at the rude door of the goatherd's hut, the body of the
Princess was being lowered into an open grave that had been dug in
a deserted churchyard, beyond the city gates, a grave where it was
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: livelier desire that he shouldn't remain in ignorance of the
peculiar justice I had done him. It wasn't that he seemed to
thirst for justice; on the contrary I hadn't yet caught in his talk
the faintest grunt of a grudge - a note for which my young
experience had already given me an ear. Of late he had had more
recognition, and it was pleasant, as we used to say in THE MIDDLE,
to see how it drew him out. He wasn't of course popular, but I
judged one of the sources of his good humour to be precisely that
his success was independent of that. He had none the less become
in a manner the fashion; the critics at least had put on a spurt
and caught up with him. We had found out at last how clever he
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: startled by the strange voice.
"Yes, I am," he answered nervously.
The other, smiling straight at him, uttered very
slowly: "You've been advertising for your son, I
believe?"
"My son Harry," mumbled Captain Hagberd,
off his guard for once. "He's coming home to-
morrow."
"The devil he is!" The stranger marvelled
greatly, and then went on, with only a slight
change of tone: "You've grown a beard like
To-morrow |
