| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: The stranger bowed his head at the stricken cry which his news elicited
from the priest, who, after a few moments' vain effort to speak, opened
the letter and read:
My dear Friend,--It is through no man's fault but mine that I have come
to this. I have had plenty of luck, and lately have been counting the
days until I should return home. But last night heavy news from New
Orleans reached me, and I tore the pressed flower to pieces. Under the
first smart and humiliation of broken faith I was rendered desperate, and
picked a needless quarrel. Thank God, it is I who have the punishment. By
dear friend, as I lie here, leaving a world that no man ever loved more,
I have come to understand you. For you and your mission have been much in
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: still hung, like an evil attendant, on our port
quarter. It was intensely hateful to my sight.
During the night we had been heading all round the
compass, trimming the yards again and again, to
what I fear must have been for the most part im-
aginary puffs of air. Then just about sunrise we
got for an hour an inexplicable, steady breeze, right
in our teeth. There was no sense in it. It fitted
neither with the season of the year nor with the
secular experience of seamen as recorded in books,
nor with the aspect of the sky. Only purposeful
The Shadow Line |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: baron has nothing. What a difference a vowel makes!
If his rents were but equal to his rants! Your cousin
Edmund moves slowly; detained, perchance, by parish duties.
There may be some old woman at Thornton Lacey to be converted.
I am unwilling to fancy myself neglected for a _young_ one.
Adieu! my dear sweet Fanny, this is a long letter from London:
write me a pretty one in reply to gladden Henry's eyes,
when he comes back, and send me an account of all the dashing
young captains whom you disdain for his sake."
There was great food for meditation in this letter,
and chiefly for unpleasant meditation; and yet, with all
Mansfield Park |
