| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: a nicely calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a
particular old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the
foundations of his house. The fog still slept on the wing above
the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and
through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the
procession of the town's life was still rolling in through the
great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. But the room was
gay with firelight. In the bottle the acids were long ago
resolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, as the colour
grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn
afternoons on hillside vineyards, was ready to be set free and to
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: her there, but other things drove her entirely from my mind. I
telephoned to the hospital that day, however, and ordered a
private room for her, and whatever comforts she might be allowed.
Mrs. Armstrong arrived Monday evening with her husband's body,
and the services were set for the next day. The house on
Chestnut Street, in town, had been opened, and Tuesday morning
Louise left us to go home. She sent for me before she went, and
I saw she had been crying.
"How can I thank you, Miss Innes?" she said. "You have taken me
on faith, and--you have not asked me any questions. Some time,
perhaps, I can tell you; and when that time comes, you will all
The Circular Staircase |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: friend?'
"`I am a Gascon,' said I, `only when I succeed.' The answer
pleased him and he laughed.
"`That will teach me,' he said, `to have my guards provided
with better horses; for if they had been able to keep up
with you and if each one of them had done as much as you and
your friend, you would have kept your word and would have
brought him back to me dead or alive.'"
"Well, there's nothing bad in that, it seems to me," said
Porthos.
"Oh, mon Dieu! no, nothing at all. It was the way in which
Twenty Years After |
