| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: and instinctive, like that of clever colour-blind animals, was
speculative and rapacious and mean. Oh they were "respectable,"
and that only made them more immondes. The young man's analysis,
while he brooded, put it at last very simply - they were
adventurers because they were toadies and snobs. That was the
completest account of them - it was the law of their being. Even
when this truth became vivid to their ingenious inmate he remained
unconscious of how much his mind had been prepared for it by the
extraordinary little boy who had now become such a complication in
his life. Much less could he then calculate on the information he
was still to owe the extraordinary little boy.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: whose margin I explored, and much of the desolation the
Martians had caused was concealed.
In the end the red weed succumbed almost as quickly as
it had spread. A cankering disease, due, it is believed, to the
action of certain bacteria, presently seized upon it. Now by
the action of natural selection, all terrestrial plants have
acquired a resisting power against bacterial diseases--they
never succumb without a severe struggle, but the red weed
rotted like a thing already dead. The fronds became bleached,
and then shrivelled and brittle. They broke off at the least
touch, and the waters that had stimulated their early growth
War of the Worlds |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: 'What I propose to read to you,' said he, skimming through the
pages, 'is the notes of a highly important conversation with a
Dutch courier of the name of David Abbas, which is the Latin for
abbot. Its results are well worth the money it cost me, for, as
Abbas at first appeared somewhat impatient, I was induced to
(what is, I believe, singularly called) stand him drink. It runs
only to about five-and-twenty pages. Yes, here it is.' He cleared
his throat, and began to read.
Mr Finsbury (according to his own report) contributed about four
hundred and ninety-nine five-hundredths of the interview, and
elicited from Abbas literally nothing. It was dull for Julia, who
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