| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: gets, the more difficult it is to him to retain a believing
conception of his own death. This influence of habit was
necessarily strong in a man whose life was so monotonous as Marner's--
who saw no new people and heard of no new events to keep alive in
him the idea of the unexpected and the changeful; and it explains
simply enough, why his mind could be at ease, though he had left his
house and his treasure more defenceless than usual. Silas was
thinking with double complacency of his supper: first, because it
would be hot and savoury; and secondly, because it would cost him
nothing. For the little bit of pork was a present from that
excellent housewife, Miss Priscilla Lammeter, to whom he had this
Silas Marner |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: a look of a tiny, insane demon.
On the ground, children from Devil's Row closed in on their
antagonist. He crooked his left arm defensively about his head and
fought with cursing fury. The little boys ran to and fro, dodging,
hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles.
From a window of an apartment house that upreared its form
from amid squat, ignorant stables, there leaned a curious woman.
Some laborers, unloading a scow at a dock at the river, paused for
a moment and regarded the fight. The engineer of a passive tugboat
hung lazily to a railing and watched. Over on the Island, a worm
building and crawled slowly along the river's bank.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: shop. Butler handed to the judge a written statement which Mr.
Justice Holroyd described as a narrative that might have been
taken from those sensational newspapers written for nursery-
maids, and from which, he said, he could not find that Butler had
ever done one good thing in the whole course of his life. Of
that life of fifty years Butler had spent thirty-five in prison.
The judge expressed his regret that a man of Butler's knowledge,
information, vanity, and utter recklessness of what evil will do,
could not be put away somewhere for the rest of his life, and
sentenced him to fifteen years' imprisonment with hard labour.
"An iniquitous and brutal sentence!" exclaimed the prisoner.
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
