| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: corner sitting high above a pair of red wheels. A guilty-looking
cat issuing from under the stones ran for a while in front of Mr
Verloc, then dived into another basement; and a thick police
constable, looking a stranger to every emotion, as if he too were
part of inorganic nature, surging apparently out of a lamp-post,
took not the slightest notice of Mr Verloc. With a turn to the
left Mr Verloc pursued his way along a narrow street by the side of
a yellow wall which, for some inscrutable reason, had No. 1 Chesham
Square written on it in black letters. Chesham Square was at least
sixty yards away, and Mr Verloc, cosmopolitan enough not to be
deceived by London's topographical mysteries, held on steadily,
The Secret Agent |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: Can you, my Lord of Winchester, behold
My sighs and tears and will not once relent?
Who should be pitiful, if you be not?
Or who should study to prefer a peace,
If holy churchmen take delight in broils?
WARWICK.
Yield, my lord protector; yield, Winchester;
Except you mean with obstinate repulse
To slay your sovereign and destroy the realm.
You see what mischief and what murder too
Hath been enacted through your enmity;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: that day comes, of great distinction. They are distinguished as it is
at carnival time, when their exuberant wit, repressed for the rest of
the year, finds a vent in more or less ingenious buffoonery.
"What times we live in! What an irrational central power which allows
such tremendous energies to run to waste! There are diplomatists in
Bohemia quite capable of overturning Russia's designs, if they but
felt the power of France at their backs. There are writers,
administrators, soldiers, and artists in Bohemia; every faculty, every
kind of brain is represented there. Bohemia is a microcosm. If the
Czar would buy Bohemia for a score of millions and set its population
down in Odessa--always supposing that they consented to leave the
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