| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: they didn't know their business."
"But our doctor is a great doctor; and you have seen yourself
that our child has some little pimples."
"Ah, ma'am," said the nurse, "that's the heat--it's nothing but
the heat of the blood breaking out. You don't need to bother
yourself; I tell you it's only the child's blood. It's not my
fault; I swear to you that she had not lacked anything, and that
I have always kept her proper."
"I am not reproaching you--"
"What is there to reproach me for? Oh, what bad luck! She's
tiny--the little one--she's a bit feeble; but Lord save us, she's
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: in the presence of the company.
Thank you, Socrates, for your consideration of me. For certainly a
stranger finding his way into great cities, and persuading the flower of
the youth in them to leave company of their kinsmen or any other
acquaintances, old or young, and live with him, under the idea that they
will be improved by his conversation, ought to be very cautious; great
jealousies are aroused by his proceedings, and he is the subject of many
enmities and conspiracies. Now the art of the Sophist is, as I believe, of
great antiquity; but in ancient times those who practised it, fearing this
odium, veiled and disguised themselves under various names, some under that
of poets, as Homer, Hesiod, and Simonides, some, of hierophants and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: door rattled slightly in the gusts of wind. It was in latitude
40 south, and nearly in the longitude of Greenwich, as far as I
can remember, that these quiet rites of Almayer's and Nina's
resurrection were taking place. In the prolonged silence it
occurred to me that there was a good deal of retrospective
writing in the story as far as it went. Was it intelligible in
its action, I asked myself, as if already the story-teller were
being born into the body of a seaman. But I heard on deck the
whistle of the officer of the watch and remained on the alert to
catch the order that was to follow this call to attention. It
reached me as a faint, fierce shout to "Square the yards."
Some Reminiscences |
