| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: had no difficulty in arresting the slow drifting of the ship.
Then he drew up the anchor and lowered it inside the enclosure.
Still there was no movement upon the part of the sleepers
beneath--they lay as dead men. Dull lights shone from openings in
the tower; but there was no sign of guard or waking inmate.
Clinging to the rope Gahan lowered himself within the enclosure,
where he had his first close view of the creatures lying there in
what he had thought sleep. With a half smothered exclamation of
horror the man drew back from the headless bodies of the rykors.
At first he thought them the corpses of decapitated humans like
himself, which was quite bad enough; but when he saw them move
The Chessmen of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: of a vast atelier filled with dust, where everything lay in disorder,
and where they saw a few paintings hanging here and there upon the
walls. They stopped before the figure of a woman, life-sized and half
nude, which filled them with eager admiration.
"Do not look at that," said Frenhofer, "it is only a daub which I made
to study a pose; it is worth nothing. Those are my errors," he added,
waving his hand towards the enchanting compositions on the walls
around them.
At these words Porbus and Poussin, amazed at the disdain which the
master showed for such marvels of art, looked about them for the
secret treasure, but could see it nowhere.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: the feeble head-pump, drew water with buckets, and in
this way managed in time to pour lots of Indian Ocean
into the main hatch. The bright stream flashed in sun-
shine, fell into a layer of white crawling smoke, and van-
ished on the black surface of coal. Steam ascended
mingling with the smoke. We poured salt water as into
a barrel without a bottom. It was our fate to pump in
that ship, to pump out of her, to pump into her; and
after keeping water out of her to save ourselves from
being drowned, we frantically poured water into her to
save ourselves from being burnt.
Youth |
