| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: the supposition of his being spontaneously solicited by some most
unexceptionable applicant, on his own terms, and as a great favour,
that he would let it at all.
How quick come the reasons for approving what we like! Lady Russell had
another excellent one at hand, for being extremely glad that Sir Walter
and his family were to remove from the country. Elizabeth had been
lately forming an intimacy, which she wished to see interrupted.
It was with the daughter of Mr Shepherd, who had returned,
after an unprosperous marriage, to her father's house, with
the additional burden of two children. She was a clever young woman,
who understood the art of pleasing--the art of pleasing, at least,
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: of the same unknown and gigantic species. Their size reminded
us of some of the archaic penguins depicted in the Old Ones’ sculptures,
and it did not take us long to conclude that they were descended
from the same stock-undoubtedly surviving through a retreat to
some warmer inner region whose perpetual blackness had destroyed
their pigmentation and atrophied their eyes to mere useless slits.
That their present habitat was the vast abyss we sought, was not
for a moment to be doubted; and this evidence of the gulf’s continued
warmth and habitability filled us with the most curious and subtly
perturbing fancies.
We wondered, too, what had caused these
At the Mountains of Madness |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: plans. Mrs. Perry nodded and stroked Carol's hand, but at
the end she sighed:
"I wish I could agree with you, dearie. I'm sure you're
one of the Lord's anointed (even if we don't see you at the
Baptist Church as often as we'd like to)! But I'm afraid
you're too tender-hearted. When Champ and I came here
we teamed-it with an ox-cart from Sauk Centre to Gopher
Prairie, and there was nothing here then but a stockade and
a few soldiers and some log cabins. When we wanted salt pork
and gunpowder, we sent out a man on horseback, and probably
he was shot dead by the Injuns before he got back. We
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