| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: side, and I saw that she had drawn her long knife, and was
holding it between her teeth.
"Do as I tell you!" I said to her sharply, but she shook her
head.
The lioness was overhauling us rapidly. She was swimming
silently, her chin just touching the water, but blood was
streaming from between her lips. It was evident that her
lungs were pierced.
She was almost upon me. I saw that in a moment she would
take me under her forepaws, or seize me in those great jaws.
I felt that my time had come, but I meant to die fighting.
Lost Continent |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: suppose you'd just gone away?"
"I was beside the men when they were hung," said the stranger.
"Oh, you were, were you?" said Peter. "I don't much care about seeing that
sort of thing myself. Some fellows think it's the best fun out to see the
niggers kick; but I can't stand it: it turns my stomach. It's not liver-
heartedness," said Peter, quickly, anxious to remove any adverse impression
as to his courage which the stranger might form; "if it's shooting or
fighting, I'm there. I've potted as many niggers as any man in our troop,
I bet. It's floggings and hangings I'm off. It's the way one's brought
up, you know. My mother never even would kill our ducks; she let them die
of old age, and we had the feathers and the eggs: and she was always
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: time or tune. His fingers traveled mechanically over the worn keys of
his instrument; he did not trouble himself over a false note now and
again (a /canard/, in the language of the orchestra), neither did the
dancers, nor, for that matter, did my old Italian's acolytes; for I
had made up my mind that he must be Italian, and an Italian he was.
There was something great, something too of the despot about this old
Homer bearing within him an /Odyssey/ doomed to oblivion. The
greatness was so real that it triumphed over his abject position; the
despotism so much a part of him, that it rose above his poverty.
There are violent passions which drive a man to good or evil, making
of him a hero or a convict; of these there was not one that had failed
|
