| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: composite soul, the soul of command, had whispered
suddenly to mine of long days at sea and of anxious
moments.
"You, too!" it seemed to say, "you, too, shall
taste of that peace and that unrest in a searching
intimacy with your own self--obscure as we were
and as supreme in the face of all the winds and all
the seas, in an immensity that receives no impress,
preserves no memories, and keeps no reckoning of
lives."
Deep within the tarnished ormulu frame, in the
The Shadow Line |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: "madame"; but the wives of the burghers of Paris were allowed to use
that of "mademoiselle," in virtue of privileges granted and confirmed
to their husbands by the several kings to whom they had done service.
Between this back-shop and the main shop was the well of a corkscrew-
staircase which gave access to the upper story, where were the great
ware-room and the dwelling-rooms of the old couple, and the garrets
lighted by skylights, where slept the children, the servant-woman, the
apprentices, and the clerks.
This crowding of families, servants, and apprentices, the little space
which each took up in the building where the apprentices all slept in
one large chamber under the roof, explains the enormous population of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: so by the systematic silence of each. NEVER, by a slip
of the tongue, have they so much as alluded to either of their
old friends, any more than Miles has alluded to his expulsion.
Oh, yes, we may sit here and look at them, and they may show
off to us there to their fill; but even while they pretend
to be lost in their fairytale they're steeped in their vision
of the dead restored. He's not reading to her," I declared;
"they're talking of THEM--they're talking horrors!
I go on, I know, as if I were crazy; and it's a wonder I'm not.
What I've seen would have made YOU so; but it has only made
me more lucid, made me get hold of still other things."
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