| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: jury rig, Marlow,' said the captain; and Mahon, as I
sailed proudly past his boat, wrinkled his curved nose
and hailed, 'You will sail that ship of yours under
water, if you don't look out, young fellow.' He was a
malicious old man--and may the deep sea where he sleeps
now rock him gently, rock him tenderly to the end of time!
"Before sunset a thick rain-squall passed over the two
boats, which were far astern, and that was the last I
saw of them for a time. Next day I sat steering my
cockle-shell--my first command--with nothing but water
and sky around me. I did sight in the afternoon the
Youth |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: years. Marcher could only feel he ought to have rendered her some
service--saved her from a capsized boat in the bay or at least
recovered her dressing-bag, filched from her cab in the streets of
Naples by a lazzarone with a stiletto. Or it would have been nice
if he could have been taken with fever all alone at his hotel, and
she could have come to look after him, to write to his people, to
drive him out in convalescence. THEN they would be in possession
of the something or other that their actual show seemed to lack.
It yet somehow presented itself, this show, as too good to be
spoiled; so that they were reduced for a few minutes more to
wondering a little helplessly why--since they seemed to know a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: from a hundred different directions, and was made partly of
rain, and partly of the blown edges of the spray. There was but
a glimpse of this; for in a few moments it was impossible to
see two rods; but when the first gust was over, the water
showed itself again, the jets of spray all beaten down, and
regular waves, of dull lead-color, breaking higher on the
shore. All the depth of blackness had left the sky, and there
remained only an obscure and ominous gray, through which the
lightning flashed white, not red. Boats came driving in from
the mouth of the bay with a rag of sail up; the men got them
moored with difficulty, and when they sculled ashore in the
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