| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: the shoulders directed against the extraordinary code of honour prevailing
in this fog-ridden island, he said with becoming dignity,--
"Ah, well! if Monsieur is satisfied, I have no griefs. You
mi'lor', are our protector. If I have done wrong, I withdraw myself."
"Aye, do!" rejoined Blakeney, with a long sigh of
satisfaction, "withdraw yourself over there. Demmed excitable little
puppy," he added under his breath, "Faith, Ffoulkes, if that's a
specimen of the goods you and your friends bring over from France, my
advice to you is, drop `em `mid Channel, my friend, or I shall have to
see old Pitt about it, get him to clap on a prohibitive tariff, and
put you in the stocks an you smuggle."
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: its margin; your thoughts are busied with the flutes of antiquity,
with daffodils, and the classic poplar, and the footsteps of the
nymphs, and the elegant and moving aridity of ancient art.
Why dedicate to you a tale of a caste so modern;--full of details
of our barbaric manners and unstable morals;--full of the need
and the lust of money, so that there is scarce a page in which
the dollars do not jingle;--full of the unrest and movement of
our century, so that the reader is hurried from place to place
and sea to sea, and the book is less a romance than a
panorama--in the end, as blood-bespattered as an epic?
Well, you are a man interested in all problems of art, even the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: interviews, whose principal motive was to render service. Thus,
one murky November afternoon he beckoned me in with a crooked
finger and that peculiar glance above his spectacles which is
perhaps my strongest physical recollection of the man.
"I have had in here a shipmaster, this morning," he said, getting
back to his desk and motioning me to a chair, "who is in want of
an officer. It's for a steamship. You know, nothing pleases me
more than to be asked, but, unfortunately, I do not quite see my
way . . ."
As the outer room was full of men I cast a wondering glance at
the closed door; but he shook his head.
A Personal Record |
