| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: soon as anything more is determined on. Yours, etc.,
"EDW. GARDINER."
"Is it possible?" cried Elizabeth, when she had finished. "Can it
be possible that he will marry her?"
"Wickham is not so undeserving, then, as we thought him," said
her sister. "My dear father, I congratulate you."
"And have you answered the letter?" cried Elizabeth.
"No; but it must be done soon."
Most earnestly did she then entreaty him to lose no more time
before he wrote.
"Oh! my dear father," she cried, "come back and write
Pride and Prejudice |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: well educated and intelligent. Who doesn't? But his connections,
education and intelligence were strictly on a par with those of the
men with whom he did business or amused himself. He had married five
years ago. At the time all his acquaintances had said he was very much
in love; and he had said so himself, frankly, because it is very well
understood that every man falls in love once in his life--unless his
wife dies, when it may be quite praiseworthy to fall in love again.
The girl was healthy, tall, fair, and in his opinion was well
connected, well educated and intelligent. She was also intensely bored
with her home where, as if packed in a tight box, her individuality--
of which she was very conscious--had no play. She strode like a
Tales of Unrest |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent
his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most
seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life.
Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is
always with them--the ship; and so is their country--the sea.
One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same.
In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores,
the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past,
veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance;
for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself,
which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.
Heart of Darkness |
