| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: Wherever we tarried we found peaceable if vastly excited
Indians. But still naked, but still unwise as to gold
and spices, traders and markets. Cambalu, Quinsai and
Zaiton of the marble bridges!
`` `Somewhere,' saith Messer Marco, `in part the country
is salvage, filled with mountains, and here come few
strangers, for the king will not have them, in order that his
treasures and certain matters of his kingdom come not into
the world's knowledge.' And again he saith, `The folk here
are naked.'--What wonder then,'' said the Admiral, ``that
we find these things! Yea, I feel surprised at the incessancy,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: especially the smiling, old-faced infant writhing with his
calfless little legs, and he could not help contrasting what was
going on in the town. Passing by the butchers', fishmongers', and
clothiers' shops, he was struck, as if he saw them for the first
time, by the appearance of the clean, well-fed shopkeepers, like
whom you could not find one peasant in the country. These men
were apparently convinced that the pains they took to deceive the
people who did not know much about their goods was not a useless
but rather an important business. The coachmen with their broad
hips and rows of buttons down their sides, and the door-keepers
with gold cords on their caps, the servant-girls with their
Resurrection |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: And when she asked herself that question it was with dread. It was
also terrible to think that she would not then have the means of
knowing what happened to the poor boy. But by making him over to
his sister, by going thus away, she gave him the advantage of a
directly dependent position. This was the more subtle sanction of
Mrs Verloc's mother's heroism and unscrupulousness. Her act of
abandonment was really an arrangement for settling her son
permanently in life. Other people made material sacrifices for
such an object, she in that way. It was the only way. Moreover,
she would be able to see how it worked. Ill or well she would
avoid the horrible incertitude on the death-bed. But it was hard,
The Secret Agent |
