| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: a mulatto. It eased before morning, and next day the
sky cleared, and as the sea went down the leak took up.
When it came to bending a fresh set of sails the crew
demanded to put back--and really there was nothing else
to do. Boats gone, decks swept clean, cabin gutted, men
without a stitch but what they stood in, stores spoiled,
ship strained. We put her head for home, and--would
you believe it? The wind came east right in our teeth.
It blew fresh, it blew continuously. We had to beat up
every inch of the way, but she did not leak so badly,
the water keeping comparatively smooth. Two hours'
Youth |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: Jane prayed that the tranquillity and sweetness of her life would
not be permanently disrupted. She meant to do so much more for
her people than she had done. She wanted the sleepy quiet
pastoral days to last always. Trouble between the Mormons and the
Gentiles of the community would make her unhappy. She was
Mormon-born, and she was a friend to poor and unfortunate
Gentiles. She wished only to go on doing good and being happy.
And she thought of what that great ranch meant to her. She loved
it all--the grove of cottonwoods, the old stone house, the
amber-tinted water, and the droves of shaggy, dusty horses and
mustangs, the sleek, clean-limbed, blooded racers, and the
Riders of the Purple Sage |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: smoke of it, lying without there in the wind and moonlight. Am I
so dull of spirit that never till now I have surmised my duty, or
have I seen it before and turned aside? But now, at least, I take
up my soul in both the hands of my affection; now I say farewell to
the white steps of heaven and the waiting faces of my friends. A
love for a love, and let mine be equalled with Keawe's! A soul for
a soul, and be it mine to perish!"
She was a deft woman with her hands, and was soon apparelled. She
took in her hands the change - the precious centimes they kept ever
at their side; for this coin is little used, and they had made
provision at a Government office. When she was forth in the avenue
|
