| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: It was a simple, rambling thing - a naive sailor's effort at
a post-facto diary - and strove to recall day by day that last
awful voyage. I cannot attempt to transcribe it verbatim in all
its cloudiness and redundance, but I will tell its gist enough
to shew why the sound the water against the vessel's sides became
so unendurable to me that I stopped my ears with cotton.
Johansen,
thank God, did not know quite all, even though he saw the city
and the Thing, but I shall never sleep calmly again when I think
of the horrors that lurk ceaselessly behind life in time and in
space, and of those unhallowed blasphemies from elder stars which
Call of Cthulhu |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: with a gimlet, flashed beneath arches faintly tinged with red in the
place of eyebrows. Anxieties had wrinkled his forehead with as many
horizontal lines as there were creases in his coat. This colorless
face expressed patience, commercial shrewdness, and the sort of wily
cupidity which is needful in business. At that time these old families
were less rare than they are now, in which the characteristic habits
and costume of their calling, surviving in the midst of more recent
civilization, were preserved as cherished traditions, like the
antediluvian remains found by Cuvier in the quarries.
The head of the Guillaume family was a notable upholder of ancient
practices; he might be heard to regret the Provost of Merchants, and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: so comfortably and coolly, he must simply have forgotten what had
passed between them. His next words, however, showed he hadn't,
and they produced, as an appeal to Paul's own memory, an effect
which would have been ludicrous if it hadn't been cruel. "Do you
recall the talk we had at my house that night, into which Miss
Fancourt's name entered? I've often thought of it since."
"Yes; no wonder you said what you did" - Paul was careful to meet
his eyes.
"In the light of the present occasion? Ah but there was no light
then. How could I have foreseen this hour?"
"Didn't you think it probable?"
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