| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: should get to shore with them, having neither sail, oar, nor
rudder; and the least capful of wind would have overset all my
navigation.
I had three encouragements - 1st, a smooth, calm sea; 2ndly, the
tide rising, and setting in to the shore; 3rdly, what little wind
there was blew me towards the land. And thus, having found two or
three broken oars belonging to the boat - and, besides the tools
which were in the chest, I found two saws, an axe, and a hammer;
with this cargo I put to sea. For a mile or thereabouts my raft
went very well, only that I found it drive a little distant from
the place where I had landed before; by which I perceived that
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: and he claimed with impressive authority the privilege of showing it
to Cecily by degrees--the Hall of Audience today, the Jessamine
Tower tomorrow, the tomb of Akbar another, and the Deserted City yet
another day. We arranged the expeditions in conference, Dacres
insisting only upon the order of them, which I saw was to be
cumulative, with the Taj at the very end, on the night precisely of
the full of the moon, with a better chance of roses. I had no
special views, but Cecily contributed some; that we should do the
Hall of Audience in the morning, so as not to interfere with the
club tennis in the afternoon, that we should bicycle to Akbar's tomb
and take a cold luncheon--if we were sure there would be no snakes--
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: still young and had not seen much of the world - his English years
had been properly arid; therefore the reversed conventions of the
Moreens - for they had THEIR desperate proprieties - struck him as
topsy-turvy. He had encountered nothing like them at Oxford; still
less had any such note been struck to his younger American ear
during the four years at Yale in which he had richly supposed
himself to be reacting against a Puritan strain. The reaction of
the Moreens, at any rate, went ever so much further. He had
thought himself very sharp that first day in hitting them all off
in his mind with the "cosmopolite" label. Later it seemed feeble
and colourless - confessedly helplessly provisional.
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