| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: but you should have heard the tone! I felt my bare arms go cold
like ice. A moment before I had been hot and faint with sheer
boredom. I jumped up from the table, rang for Rose, and told her
to bring me my fur cloak. He remained in his chair leering at me
curiously. When I had the fur on my shoulders and the girl had
gone out of the room I gave him the surprise of his life. 'Take
yourself off instantly,' I said. 'Go trample on the poor if you
like but never dare speak to me again.' At this he leaned his head
on his arm and sat so long at the table shading his eyes with his
hand that I had to ask, calmly - you know - whether he wanted me to
have him turned out into the corridor. He fetched an enormous
The Arrow of Gold |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: part of him she loved. Ah! if you had felt, as I felt then, her
burning tears falling on your hands, you would know what
gratitude is, when it follows so closely upon the benefit. Her
eyes shone with a feverish glitter, a faint ray of happiness
gleamed out of her terrible suffering, as she grasped my hands in
hers, and said, in a choking voice:
"Ah! you love! May you be happy always. May you never lose her
whom you love."
She broke off, and fled away with her treasure.
Next morning, this night-scene among my dreams seemed like a
dream; to make sure of the piteous truth, I was obliged to look
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: fiction? Better to wait,--to question the mother first, and thus
make sure.
Still--there were so many coincidences! The face, the smile, the
eyes, the voice, the whole charm;---then that mark,---and the
fair hair. Zouzoune had always resembled Adele so strangely!
That golden hair was a Scandinavian bequest to the Florane
family;---the tall daughter of a Norwegian sea captain had once
become the wife of a Florane. Viosca?---who ever knew a Viosca
with such hair? Yet again, these Spanish emigrants sometimes
married blonde German girls ... Might be a case of atavism, too.
Who was this Viosca? If that was his wife,---the little brown
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