| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: when the sailors began to weigh anchor, Paul noticed that Mathias was
making signals to him with his handkerchief. The old housekeeper had
hurried to her master, who seemed to be excited by some sudden event.
Paul asked the captain to wait a moment, and send a boat to the pier,
which was done. Too feeble himself to go aboard, Mathias gave two
letters to a sailor in the boat.
"My friend," he said, "this packet" (showing one of the two letters)
"is important; it has just arrived by a courier from Paris in thirty-
five hours. State this to Monsieur le comte; don't neglect to do so;
it may change his plans."
"Would he come ashore?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: been there, now and again, by fits and starts."
"At the light?"
"At the Danger-light."
"What does it seem to do?"
He repeated, if possible with increased passion and vehemence, that
former gesticulation of, "For God's sake, clear the way!"
Then he went on. "I have no peace or rest for it. It calls to me,
for many minutes together, in an agonised manner, 'Below there!
Look out! Look out!' It stands waving to me. It rings my little
bell--"
I caught at that. "Did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: the morning in a spirit of enjoyable indolence. I affirm it with
assurance, and I don't even know now what were the books then
lying about the room. What ever they were, they were not the
works of great masters, where the secret of clear thought and
exact expression can be found. Since the age of five I have been
a great reader, as is not perhaps wonderful in a child who was
never aware of learning to read. At ten years of age I had read
much of Victor Hugo and other romantics. I had read in Polish
and in French, history, voyages, novels; I knew "Gil Blas" and
"Don Quixote" in abridged editions; I had read in early boyhood
Polish poets and some French poets, but I cannot say what I read
A Personal Record |
