| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: and refusing to pay a farthing of her debts or funeral expenses.
Some days later, when gossip on the subject was subsiding, a
fresh scandal revived it. A literary friend of Mr. Jansenius's
helped him to compose an epitaph, and added to it a couple of
pretty and touching stanzas, setting forth that Henrietta's
character had been one of rare sweetness and virtue, and that her
friends would never cease to sorrow for her loss. A tradesman who
described himself as a "monumental mason" furnished a book of
tomb designs, and Mr. Jansenius selected a highly ornamental one,
and proposed to defray half the cost of its erection. Trefusis
objected that the epitaph was untrue, and said that he did not
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: two strangers on board. I pointed to the recessed part where
the little campstool awaited him and laid my finger on my lips.
He made a gesture--somewhat vague--a little mysterious,
accompanied by a faint smile, as if of regret.
This is not the place to enlarge upon the sensations of a man
who feels for the first time a ship move under his feet to his
own independent word. In my case they were not unalloyed.
I was not wholly alone with my command; for there was that stranger
in my cabin. Or rather, I was not completely and wholly with her.
Part of me was absent. That mental feeling of being in two
places at once affected me physically as if the mood of secrecy
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: spectators.
"Nay, I know not," answered his friend. "But the sun dazzles my
eyes strangely. How dim and faded his lordship looks all of a
sudden! Bless my wits, what is the matter with me?"
"The wonder is," said the other, "that his pipe, which was out
only an instant ago, should be all alight again, and with the
reddest coal I ever saw. There is something mysterious about this
stranger. What a whiff of smoke was that! Dim and faded did you
call him? Why, as he turns about the star on his breast is all
ablaze."
"It is, indeed," said his companion; "and it will go near to
Mosses From An Old Manse |
