| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: men drunk with wine. This bit of forest might
have appeared to an ethereal wanderer as a scene
of the result of some frightful debauch.
On the other side of the fire the youth
observed an officer asleep, seated bolt upright,
with his back against a tree. There was some-
thing perilous in his position. Badgered by
dreams, perhaps, he swayed with little bounces
and starts, like an old toddy-stricken grandfather
in a chimney corner. Dust and stains were upon
his face. His lower jaw hung down as if lacking
The Red Badge of Courage |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: hard by! In fact, there were so many /buts/ and /ifs/, that, possessed
by one of those mad temptations for which there is no word in any
language, not even in that of the orgy, he had set out in pursuit of
this woman, hunting her down like a hardened Parisian.
On the way, whether he kept behind or ahead of this damsel, he studied
every detail of her person and her dress, hoping to dislodge the
insane and ridiculous fancy that had taken up an abode in his brain;
but he presently found in his examination a keener pleasure than he
had felt only the day before in gazing at the perfect shape of a woman
he loved, as she took her bath. Now and again, the unknown fair,
bending her head, gave him a look like that of a kid tethered with its
Gambara |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: any sense I should have told him straight away of the treasure
and taken him into Co. I've no doubt he'd have come into Co. A child,
with a few hours to think it over, could have seen the connection
between my diving-dress and the loss of the Ocean Pioneer. A week
after he left I went out one morning and saw the Motherhood, the
salver's ship from Starr Race, towing up the channel and sounding.
The whole blessed game was up, and all my trouble thrown away. Gummy!
How wild I felt! And guying it in that stinking silly dress! Four
months!"
The sunburnt man's story degenerated again. "Think of it," he said,
when he emerged to linguistic purity once more. "Forty thousand
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